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Special Report 23

Realization that continental records of Quaternary rocks were more complex than hitherto believed came with the re-interpretation of oxygen isotope stratigraphy in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This necessitated a comprehensive re-evaluation that has been assisted by the emergence of new geochronological methods for terrestrial as well as land-sea correlations. The current state of such correlations is presented in this revised set of proposals for correlations in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, which also includes the Quaternary geology of the continental shelf.Correlation with the global standard of oxygen isotope stratigraphy enables the significance of British lithostratigraphical units to be appreciated in a wider context that includes the evolution of the climate system on a margin of the northeast Atlantic Ocean. It thus provides timely British data for the international palaeoceanographical and palaeoclimatological community and the correlations proposed are primarily on Milankovitch timescales. But their appearance coincides with the early stages of a paradigm shift to the search for both terrestrial and land-sea correlation on millennial timescales and then on centennial and decadal ones. This is the first of many similar terrestrial and land-sea correlations.