Chronology and extent of Late Cenozoic ice sheets in North America: A magnetostratigraphic assessment

doi:10.1016/S1571-0866(04)80181-7

Developments in Quaternary Sciences

Volume 2, Part B, 2004, Pages 1-7

https://doi.org/10.1016/S1571-0866(04)80181-7 Get rights and content

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This chapter discusses the classic four-fold subdivision of the Pleistocene in both North America and Europe dominated terrestrial Quaternary palaeoclimate, which have been studied for many decades. With the exception of the last major continental glaciation, the understanding of the extent and timing of ice-sheet development in North America has remained uncertain. With the more widespread use of magnetostratigraphy and detailed mapping of superficial deposits, it has become possible to identify the approximate: spatial extent of ice sheets, as well as the timing of their appearance and disappearance. It reviews that with appropriate sampling and analytical techniques, geomagnetic polarity data can be obtained from tills, as well as from altered sediments such as palaeosols, to provide a direct assessment of the palaeomagnetism of glacial and interglacial environments. The chapter discusses the advances which have been made in dating and modeling of past terrestrial climatic events. It has been in particular, the contribution of magnetostratigraphy which has provided timelines for glacial and interglacial events of the last 3.0 million years, and assigned sediments to the Chrons and Subchrons of this period. In the absence of absolute dating tools, magnetostratigraphy affords a valuable means of assigning terrestrial ice age deposits to the geological timescale, and most importantly, allows a correlation to the more complete marine record. The distribution of past ice sheets and their chronologies will be better defined with future magneto-stratigraphical work.

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Citation Excerpt :
They maintained that Canadian Shield erratics (i.e. granitic or gneissic material), indicative of a continental-style Laurentide glaciation, were only found scattered on the uppermost surface of the section (HR 1). In their absence, they argued that all underlying diamictons originated from a local “Horton Ice Cap” source (Melville Hills; Fig. 1a; Barendregt and Duk-Rodkin, 2004; Duk-Rodkin et al., 2004; Duk-Rodkin and Barendregt, 2011) and that Laurentide ice was responsible for depositing only the uppermost surface lag. Geomorphological mapping was undertaken on ArcticDEM hillshade imagery (Porter et al., 2018), viewed under oblique and vertical perspectives using various illumination aspects and elevations, in combination with stereo aerial photographs and Google Earth imagery.
The Smoking Hills area in the western Canadian Arctic was purported to contain a regionally rare Quaternary stratigraphic section with multiple, local ice cap-derived tills and a long chronology constrained by palaeomagnetic markers. We present a fundamental revision of previous glacial and magnetostratigraphic interpretations based on detailed sedimentological and structural analyses of the main stratigraphic section and many new exposures, cosmogenic nuclide isochron burial dating, and a systematic reconstruction of the geomorphology and landscape evolution using a glacial landsystem approach. We demonstrate that the Smoking Hills area was fully glaciated during the last (Wisconsinan) glaciation. Previously reported tills ascribed to multiple glaciations represent instead a complex facies sequence of glacitectonic thrust stacking of Laurentide Ice Sheet (LIS) sourced diamictons, glacilacustrine and glacifluvial deposits, together with previously unidentified, poorly-consolidated Cretaceous bedrock rafts and deformed intraclasts. Much of this sedimentation and glacitectonic activity dates to the last (Wisconsinan) glaciation and can be reconciled with a polythermal ice sheet marginal landsystem signature, wherein ice-cored moraine belts are developed over subglacial bedforms (flutings) arranged in discrete flowsets. The flowsets record the complex interaction of ice streams nourished by ice flowing from three main sources: Great Bear Lake to the south, Amundsen Gulf (Franklin Bay) to the east and Liverpool Bay (Mackenzie Valley) to the southwest. Decoupling of the ice margins of these three ice sources gave rise to interlobate ice-dammed lake development over the lower Horton River area during final deglaciation. A cosmogenic ²⁶Al/¹⁰Be isochron burial age of 2.9 ± 0.3 Ma (1σ, n = 4) from the lowermost glacial diamicton and glacitectonite sequence provides evidence of perhaps the earliest continental glaciation of this region. This deposit postdates, or is perhaps a later re-advance of the same initial glaciation that produced widespread glacitectonic disturbance of bedrock in preglacial valley networks and early glacifluvial and glacilacustrine deposits containing an ice wedge pseudomorph. Subsequent glaciations have largely removed or cannibalised pre-existing records to construct complex till and glacitectonite stacks that contain reworked organics with non-finite radiocarbon ages. One site preserves buried “old” glacier ice in which prominent ice wedges had formed during an interglacial permafrost phase and were then deformed down-flow by the LIS during the Wisconsinan glaciation.
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Chronology and extent of Late Cenozoic ice sheets in North America: A magnetostratigraphic assessment

Publisher Summary

Quaternary International

Earth and Planetary Science Letters

Changes in the extent of North American ice sheets during the late Cenozoic

Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences

Magnetostratigraphy of Quaternary and late Tertiary sediments on Banks Island, Canadian Arctic Archipelago

Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences

Paleomagnetic evidence for Late Cenozoic glaciations in the Mackenzie Mountains of the Northwest Territories, Canada

Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences

Revised calibration of the geomagnetic timescale for the Late Cretaceous and Cenozoic

Journal of Geophysical Research