Abstract
Recent chronostratigraphic evidence suggests that the central Australian Great Barrier Reef formed within the past 780 k.y. Periplatform sediments of the same age recovered from the western Coral Sea record a progressive decrease in the δ18O of planktonic foraminifera to the present. Several investigators have proposed that this trend represents an appreciable late Pleistocene warming (∼4 °C) of ocean surface temperatures, which they posit catalyzed the growth of the Great Barrier Reef. Contrary to this hypothesis, we demonstrate using alkenone paleothermometry (