About MioOcean

MioOcean is an open, community‑driven paleoceanographic database designed to compile, harmonize, and share proxy data to reconstruct ocean temperatures across the Miocene. Our aim is to create a unified resource that supports reproducible research, cross‑proxy comparisons, and large‑scale syntheses of past climate and ocean states.

The project re-evaluates and re-calculates existing age models and brings together geochemical proxy data from planktic and benthic foraminifera, as well as lipid biomarkers.

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Our Mission

MioOcean exists to:

• Integrate dispersed paleoceanographic datasets into a single, consistent structure
• Enable comparison across sites, proxies, and time intervals
• Support open science and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data practices
• Accelerate scientific discovery by making high‑quality, curated data publicly accessible
• Encourage collaboration within the paleoceanographic community

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Scientific Scope

MioOcean focuses on time intervals critical to understanding Earth’s past climate dynamics, including but not limited to:

• Early Miocene
• Miocene Climate Optimum (MCO)
• Middle Miocene Climate Transition (MMCT)
• Late Miocene Cooling (LMC)

As the database grows, new proxy data and proxy types will continue to be added through community contributions.

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Data Included

MioOcean hosts and organizes a wide range of marine proxy data, such as:

Inorganic Proxies

• Foraminifera Mg/Ca
• Foraminifera and coccolithophore clumped isotopes
• Glassy foraminifera δ¹⁸O

Organic Proxies

• GDGT-derived TEX₈₆
• Alkenone-derived U^K₃₇

Metadata

• Core/site information (IODP/ODP/DSDP and non‑drilled sites)
• Publication, Database and Age Model references

Updated Ages

• recalculated MioOcean depths
• recalculated and recommended MioOcean ages

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Contribute to MioOcean

MioOcean thrives through community participation. You can contribute by:

• Uploading newly generated or legacy datasets
• Sharing updated age models
• Adding site‑level metadata
• Reporting issues or inconsistencies
• Suggesting new proxy categories or data structures

To submit data, please visit our Submit Data page, where you will find data templates, metadata guidelines, and licensing information.

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Open Science Commitment

MioOcean is built on the principles of transparency, reproducibility, and openness. All datasets are:

• Freely available for research and teaching
• Cited and credited to original authors
• Released under an open data license (details on the submission page)

We welcome collaboration from researchers, students, field teams, labs, and citizen scientists.

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Relevant links

PlioMioVar working group: https://pastglobalchanges.org/pliomiovar

Miocene Data Portal: https://bolin.su.se/data/miocene-temperature-portal

DeepMIP: https://www.deepmip.org/