Global Aridity during the Early Miocene? A Terrestrial Paleoclimate Record from the Ebro Basin, Spain

Paleosols are an important tool in the paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental interpretation of continental deposits and can provide a high‐resolution proxy for paleoclimate. Results from geochemical climofunctions applied to Early Miocene strata exposed in the Ebro Basin, Spain, demonstrate that mean annual precipitation was the dominant control on paleosol type and indicate that the paleoclimate was considerably wetter during the Early Miocene, by up to 1150 mm yr−1, in comparison to modern values, placing it in a subhumid climatic regime rather than an arid‐semiarid regime as previously suggested by sedimentological and paleontological approaches. By making comparisons with published data on paleoclimate during the Early Miocene, this article stresses the importance of regional climatic changes in global paleoclimatic interpretation.