Carbon isotope and Rhenium/Osmium analysis from ODP Leg 174AX, Bass River site, New Jersey Shelf, North Atlantic

In addition to the anoxic conditions other environmental disturbances also occurred, including extremely high global temperatures (with a superimposed cooling pulse dubbed the Plenus Cold Event), an intensified hydrological cycle, enhanced silicate weathering, and wildfires.

OAE 2 and the climate/environmental perturbations associated with this event are thought to have been ultimately triggered by large-scale submarine volcanism during the emplacement of one or more large igneous provinces into/onto the oceanic crust. This link with volcanism is chiefly evidenced by geochronology studies of the volcanic rocks and stratigraphic archives of the event, and sedimentary proxies of volcanism utilized on these same records of OAE 2, with osmium-isotopes apparently the most reliable of these volcanic markers (at least for OAE 2).