Thesea-level curve (also known as the eustatic curve) is the representation of the changes of thesea level relative to present day mean sea level as gleaned from the stratigraphic record throughout thegeological history.
The first such curve is theVail curve orExxon curve. The names of the curve refer to the fact that in 1977 a team ofExxon geologists fromEsso Production Research headed byPeter Vail published amonograph[1] on seismic stratigraphic principles and global (eustati)) sea-level changes. Their sea-level curve was based onseismic andbiostratigraphic data accumulated duringpetroleum exploration.[2]
The Vail curve (and the monograph itself) was the subject of debate among geologists, because it was based on undisclosed commercially confidential stratigraphic data, and hence not independently verifiable.[3] Because of this, there were later efforts to establish a sea-level curve based on non-commercial, public domain data from outcrops exposed on land and thus verifiable by other researchers.
In 1987–1988 a revised eustatic sea-level curve for theMesozoic andCenozoic eras was published in Science magazine, now known as theHaq et al. sea-level curve,[4] in reference to the marine geologist/oceanographerBilal Haq[2]
Bilal Haq and Stephen Schutter later published thePaleozoic sea-level curve in 2008 also in Science. Subsequent revisions of the Mesozoic eustatic sea-level curve have been published by Haq for theCretaceous,Jurassic, andTriassic, respectively in 2014, 2017, and 2018. Haq and his co-workers have now completed the sea-level history of the entirePhanerozoic Eon.
