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The debate over isostatic uplift versus discharge as drivers of Quaternary river incision is explored here through geospatial analysis of a ~250‐m‐relief terrace sequence from the Río Pinturas (Argentine Patagonia). The geomorphic setting of the Cañadon Caracoles reach allows evaluation of discharge as a driver of terrace incision because advancing ice during Pleistocene glaciations blocked Pacific drainage and routed meltwater from an expanded ~104‐km2 catchment to the Atlantic through the dryland steppe of the study area. Twenty‐two terrace levels, some assigned to previously dated ice margins [Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 32–36, MIS 16, MIS 8 and MIS 2], were identified. Average net incision since 800 ka (~0.34 m ka−1) exceeded regional uplift rates. The MIS 2 terraces, with ante quem and post quem age constraint on the timing of terrace formation, show that terrace incision was episodic and faster still during a transitional warming climate. Glacier recession and proglacial lake formation at ~18 ka led to rapid incision of ~11.7 m ka−1 over a few millennia. River capture and negligible flow from ~15.0 ka caused fan‐dammed lake formation on the valley floor and vertical stability during MIS 1. The Pinturas terraces demonstrate rapid incision can be driven by discharge and sediment dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous investigation of isolated landforms, on the eastern margin of the East Anglian Fenland, England, has demonstrated that they represent an ice-marginal delta and alluvial fan complex deposited at the margin of an ice lobe that entered the Fenland during the 'Tottenhill glaciation' (termed the 'Skertchly Line'). They have been attributed, based on regional correlations, to a glaciation during the Late Wolstonian (i.e. Late Saalian) Substage (Drenthe Stadial, early Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 6). This paper aimed to test this correlation by directly optically luminescence dating, for the first time, sediments found within the Skertchly Line at Shouldham Thorpe, Norfolk, and Maidscross Hill, Suffolk, together with those in associated kame terrace deposits at Watlington, Norfolk. Ages ranged from 244 ± 10 ka to 12.8 ± 0.46 ka, all the results being younger than MIS 8 with some clearly showing the landforms have been subsequently subjected to periglacial processes, particularly during the Late Devensian Substage (∼MIS 2). Most of the remainder fall within the range 169–212 ka and could be assigned to MIS 6, thus confirming the previously proposed age of the glaciation. The local and regional implications of these conclusions are discussed, the maximum ice limit being linked to that of the Amersfoort–Nijmegen glaciotectonic ridge limit in the central Netherlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Four recently discovered glacio-fluvial paleovalleys in southeast Jordan and northwest Saudi Arabia are described for the first time. The paleovalleys formed as a result of glacial erosion by series of sub-parallel valley glaciers during the Late Ordovician (Hirnantian) southern hemisphere glaciation on the Arabian Plate. The southwest-northeast orientation of the paleovalleys, Proterozoic erratic clasts and paleocurrent vectors indicate the advance of glaciers and subsequent glacio-fluvial siliciclastics emanating from a paleo-ice sheet located to the south on the Arabian Shield. U-shaped, paleovalley cross-sectional morphologies and gently inclined longitudinal profiles indicate initial glacial erosion of the 'finger-like' paleovalleys, probably as wet-based valley glaciers, eroded up to 250 m depth into Late Ordovician marine bedrock formations. Paleovalley-fill sequences comprise a tripartite upwards succession: (a) basal sandstone-dominated tillite with well-rounded, grooved and striated granitoid and metamorphic basement clasts derived from the Proterozoic Arabian Shield together with locally derived, rounded and elongate boulders eroded from the local bedrock at the margins of the paleovalleys (Retrogradational Lowstand Sequence); (b) green chloritic siltstone (Zarqa Formation) deposited during a progradational sea-level rise with marine influence (Transgressive Sequence); (c) coarse-grained, trough cross-bedded sandstone (Sarah Formation) attributed to progradational fluvial sedimentation as glacial outwash. Rapid sea-level rise during latest Hirnantian to Early Llandovery time resulted in marine flooding of the glacio-fluvial alluvial plain and deposition of organic-rich mudstones representing transgressive and high-stand sequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Vorogovka Basin records the establishment and infilling of a rift-related basin during Cryogenian time. Its infill records the whole spectrum of continental clastic and carbonate shelfal to deep marine systems. Initiation of the Vorogovka trough as a sedimentary basin was accompanied by subsidence, and the accumulation of diamictites and conglomerates, of probable glacial affinity. The accumulation of Sturtian-age diamictites and the unsorted gravelstones resting on a metamorphic basement was coeval with rifting. Based on a facies analysis, it is shown that the Vorogovka trough demonstrates the evolution of a basin characterized initially by a half-graben with glaciofluvial deposits, and with a shelf shallow-marine shelf passing into a slope at the passive continental margin side. Episodic re(activation) of trough bounding faults can be illustrated on the basis of palaeocurrent analysis of fluvial-deltaic plain deposits, in deep-water fans and in shelfal, tide-related sediments. The final stage in basin evolution was characterized by the establishment of carbonate systems of probable microbial affinity and mixed tidal siliciclastic-carbonate sediments in the outer shelf. The phases of subsidence and palaeogeographic evolution proposed herein provide the basis for correlation between Cryogenian sediments of the Vorogovka Basin with those on other continents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The timing of the ice margin retreat of the Late Glacial Patagonian Ice Sheet (PIS) in southern Patagonia has been the object of discussion for many years. In order to resolve questions about the complex response of the PIS to past climate change, any geological interpretation and data modelling need evaluation against an absolute chronology. The aim of this project is to investigate the applicability of OSL dating to sediments from southern Patagonia; in particular, we examine the dating potential of K-feldspar IRSL signals. Samples were collected from landforms interpreted as being deposited during deglaciation of the PIS, with an expected age range of 17 and 22 ka, and from recently deposited sediment. We measure small aliquots and single grain distributions using an IR50 SAR protocol with IRSL stimulation at 50 °C following a preheat at 250 °C (held for 60 s). Uncertainties are assigned to our individual dose estimates based on the over-dispersion (OD) observed in laboratory gamma dose recovery experiments (22% for small aliquots and 18% for single grains). Then the possible effects of incomplete bleaching and differential fading are examined. For our natural samples we observe environmental ODs between 30 and 130% and mean residual doses between ∼30 and 80 Gy. Minimum age models are used to identify the part of the dose population that is most likely to have been well-bleached and results from these models are compared. The models give ages that are consistent with each other; this may imply that they successfully identified the fully-bleached grains in the distributions, although there are some discrepancies between our small aliquot and single grain data. We observe large fading rates (on average 7.9 ± 0.6%/decade for large aliquots) but nevertheless a comparison of our fading corrected ages with the expected age range shows that 2 out of 3 ages are consistent with geological interpretation and an established radiocarbon and cosmogenic nuclide chronology. We conclude that these investigations suggest that fading corrections can be based on laboratory average small aliquot/single grain fading rates. The third age is supported by an alternative geological interpretation, and the two ages consistent with the existing chronology imply that in the Strait of the Magellan the hills of the Brunswick peninsula (>70 m.a.s.l) were deglaciated at around 22 ka. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]