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We studied the sequence of climatic and hydrological events associated with the formation of peat during the Holocene, using pollen, diatoms and environmental magnetism from peat cores at three locations in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta of California: Browns Island, Franks Wetland and Webb Track Levee. Our data show that peat first formed under relatively dry conditions in a freshwater environment before 6.5 ka BP. Subsequently, pollen accumulation rates were highest prior to intervals with high peat accretion rates but are inversely correlated with organic accumulation rate. Intervals of high peat accretion were preceded by pulses of terrigenous material. During intensive drainage episodes, high flows delivered abundant, coarser-grained sediment to the marshes, which inundated the existing vegetation and decreased the rate of biochemical decay. The build-up of undecomposed organic material led to the acceleration of peat accretion. Our data support the rarely discussed hypothesis that most of the peat in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta formed in freshwater marshes that were fed by rivers draining from the Sierra Nevada, rather than in saltwater wetlands resulting from sea level rise and estuarine submergence. This result has important implications for current attempts to remediate and restore the Delta ecosystem.

The Hamburg meteorite fell on January 16, 2018, near Hamburg, Michigan, after a fireball event widely observed in the U.S. Midwest and in Ontario, Canada. Several fragments fell onto frozen surfaces of lakes and, thanks to weather radar data, were recovered days after the fall. The studied rock fragments show no or little signs of terrestrial weathering. Here, we present the initial results from an international consortium study to describe the fall, characterize the meteorite, and probe the collision history of Hamburg. About 1kg of recovered meteorites was initially reported. Petrology, mineral chemistry, trace element and organic chemistry, and O and Cr isotopic compositions are characteristic of H4 chondrites. Cosmic ray exposure ages based on cosmogenic 3He, 21Ne, and 38Ar are ~12Ma, and roughly agree with each other. Noble gas data as well as the cosmogenic 10Be concentration point to a small 40-60cm diameter meteoroid. An 40Ar-39Ar age of 4532±24Ma indicates no major impact event occurring later in its evolutionary history, consistent with data of other H4 chondrites. Microanalyses of phosphates with LA-ICPMS give an average Pb-Pb age of 4549±36Ma. This is in good agreement with the average SIMS Pb-Pb phosphate age of 4535.3±9.5Ma and U-Pb Concordia age of 4535±10Ma. The weighted average age of 4541.6±9.5Ma reflects the metamorphic phosphate crystallization age after parent body formation in the early solar system.

It has been proposed that all L chondrites resulted from an ongoing collisional cascade of fragments that originated from the formation of the similar to 500 Ma old asteroid family Gefion, located near the 5:2 mean-motion resonance with Jupiter in the middle Main Belt. If so, L chondrite pre-atmospheric orbits should be distributed as expected for that source region. Here, we present contradictory results from the orbit and collisional history of the October 24, 2015, L6 ordinary chondrite fall at Creston, CA (here reclassified to L5/6). Creston's short 1.30 +/- 0.02 AU semimajor axis orbit would imply a long dynamical evolution if it originated from the middle Main Belt. Indeed, Creston has a high cosmic ray exposure age of 40-50 Ma. However, Creston's small meteoroid size and low 4.23 +/- 0.07 degrees inclination indicate a short dynamical lifetime against collisions. This suggests, instead, that Creston originated most likely in the inner asteroid belt and was delivered via the nu(6) resonance. The U-Pb systematics of Creston apatite reveals a Pb-Pb age of 4,497.1 +/- 3.7 Ma, and an upper intercept U-Pb age of 4,496.7 +/- 5.8 Ma (2 sigma), circa 70 Ma after formation of CAI, as found for other L chondrites. The K-Ar (age similar to 4.3 Ga) and U,Th-He (age similar to 1 Ga) chronometers were not reset at similar to 500 Ma, while the lower intercept U-Pb age is poorly defined as 770 +/- 320 Ma. So far, the three known L chondrites that impacted on orbits with semimajor axes a AU all have high (>3 Ga) K-Ar ages. This argues for a source of some of our L chondrites in the inner Main Belt. Not all L chondrites originate in a continuous population of Gefion family debris stretching across the 3:1 mean-motion resonance.

Meteorites have been found on the small Misfits Flat dry lakebed near Stagecoach, Nevada (119.382W, +39.348N). Since the first find on Sept. 22, 2013, a total of 58 stones of weathering stage W2/3 with a combined mass of 339 g have been collected in 19 visits to the area. This small (3.3 × 3.6 km) lakebed is now a newly designated dense collection area (DCA). Most meteorites were found in a small 350 × 180 m area along the north shore and most are fragments of several broken individual stones. Three of these fragments were classified as an LL4/5 of shock stage S2, now named Misfits Flat 001, one of which (stone MF33) fell 8.1 ± 1.3 ka ago based on the 14C terrestrial age, assuming it came from a 20–80 cm diameter meteoroid. In addition, a small darkly crusted meteorite MF34, now named Misfits Flat 002, was found 820 m WSW from the main mass. This meteorite is classified as an LL5 ordinary chondrite with shock stage S4/5. The meteorite is saturated in 14C at 63 dpm kg−1, suggesting it originated from the center of a 0.5 m diameter meteoroid, or deep inside a ~1.0 m meteoroid, less than 300 yr ago. Accounts exist of a fireball seen at 13:15 UT on March 2, 1895, that are consistent with the find location of Misfits Flat 002.

A new record of the Mono Lake excursion (MLE) is reported from the Summer Lake Basin of Oregon, USA. Sediment magnetic properties indicate magnetite as the magnetization carrier and imply suitability of the sediments as accurate recorders of the magnetic field including relative paleointensity (RPI) variations. The magnitudes and phases of the declination, inclination, and RPI components of the new record correlate well with other coeval but lower resolution records from western North America including records from the Wilson Creek Formation exposed around Mono Lake. The virtual geomagnetic pole (VGP) path of the new record is similar to that from another high-resolution record of the MLE from Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Site 919 in the Irminger Basin between Iceland and Greenland but different from the VGP path for the Laschamp excursion (LE), including that found lower in the ODP-919 core. Thus, the prominent excursion recorded at Mono Lake, California, is not the LE but rather one that is several thousands of years younger. The MLE VGP path contains clusters, the locations of which coincide with nonaxial dipole features found in the Holocene geomagnetic field. The clusters are occupied in the same time progression by VGPs from Summer Lake and the Irminger Basin, but the phase of occupation is offset, a behavior that suggests time-transgressive decay and return of the principal field components at the beginning and end of the MLE, respectively, leaving the nonaxial dipole features associated with the clusters dominant during the excursion.

[1] We synthesize environmental magnetic results for sediments from the Victoria Land Basin (VLB), which span a total stratigraphic thickness of 2.6 km and a ~17 Myr age range. We assess how magnetic properties record paleoclimatic, tectonic, and provenance variations or mixtures of signals resulting from these processes. The magnetic properties are dominated by large-scale magnetite concentration variations. In the late Eocene and early Oligocene, magnetite concentration variations coincide with detrital smectite concentration and crystallinity variations, which reflect paleoclimatic control on magnetic properties through influence on weathering regime; high magnetite and smectite concentrations indicate warmer and wetter climates and vice versa. During the early Oligocene, accelerated uplift of the Transantarctic Mountains gave rise to magnetic signatures that reflect progressive erosion of the Precambrian-Mesozoic metamorphic, intrusive, and sedimentary stratigraphic cover succession associated with unroofing of the adjacent Transantarctic Mountains. From the early Oligocene to the early Miocene, a consistent fining upward of magnetite particles through the recovered composite record likely reflects increased physical weathering with glacial grinding contributing to progressively finer grained Ferrar Dolerite-sourced magnetite. After 24 Ma, the magnetic properties of VLB sediments are primarily controlled by the weathering and erosion of McMurdo Volcanic Group rocks; increased volcanic glass contents contribute to the fining upward of magnetite grain size. Overall, long-term magnetic property variations record the first-order geological processes that controlled sedimentation in the VLB, including paleoclimatic, tectonic, provenance, and volcanic influences.

The Venezuelan Andes are an asymmetric, doubly vergent orogen that is flanked on its southeastern side by the Barinas basin. Analyses of sedimentary facies, sandstone petrography, apatite fission-tracks, and magnetostratigraphy were completed on a 1750-m section of the syn-orogenic Neogene Parangula and Rio Yuca formations in the Barinas side foothills of the Venezuelan Andes. Our sedimentary facies analyses record a progression of sedimentary environments from floodplain and floodplain channel deposits through the 560-m thick Parangula Formation transitioning to distal alluvial fan deposits in the lower Rio Yuca Formation and finally to an alternation of distal alluvial fan and two, ∼100-m thick organic-rich lacustrine deposits in the upper third of the section. Major- and minor-mineral petrographic analysis reveals unroofing of the Venezuelan Andes, with quartz arenite composition low in the section succeeded by metamorphic and igneous clasts and potassium feldspar appearing near the base of the Rio Yuca Formation. Apatite fission-track (AFT) analysis of sandstones and pebbles generated ages of 11.2 ± 1.3 – 13.8 ± 2.0 Ma over ∼1100 m of stratigraphic section. Thermal modeling of the detrital AFT and vitrinite data from the lower Rio Yuca Formation indicates exhumation of the source area was occurring by 12–13 Ma, surface exposure at 10–9 Ma, maximum burial by 4–2 Ma and exhumation of the sedimentary package starting 3–2 Ma. Accumulation of the Rio Yuca Formation is contemporaneous with a basinward migration of the deformation front. Regional considerations indicate that the Venezuelan Andes evolved from a primarily singly vergent orogen to its current double vergence over the interval of Neogene-Quaternary sedimentation.

A sediment core taken from the western edge of the Bonneville Basin has provided high-resolution proxy records of relative lake-size change for the period 45.1e10.5 calendar ka (hereafter ka). Age control was provided by a paleomagnetic secular variation (PSV)-based age model for Blue Lake core BL04-4. Continuous records of d 18 O and total inorganic carbon (TIC) generally match an earlier lake-level envelope based on outcrops and geomorphic features, but with differences in the timing of some hydrologic events/states. The Stansbury Oscillation was found to consist of two oscillations centered on 25 and 24 ka. Lake Bonneville appears to have reached its geomorphic highstand and began spilling at 18.5 ka. The fall from the highstand to the Provo level occurred at 17.0 ka and the lake intermittently overflowed at the Provo level until 15.2 ka, at which time the lake fell again, bottoming out at w14.7 ka. The lake also fell briefly below the Provo level at w15.9 ka. Carbonate and d

The Auckland Volcanic Field contains several maars that formed after the last interglacial and subsequently filled with sediment. Two of these maars, Pukaki and Onepoto, were recently cored as part of the Auckland Maar Lakes Project. The tephra stratigraphy of the cores indicates that sediment accumulated relatively slowly in both maars until the Holocene when ocean waters breached the craters and they filled up quite rapidly. Using u-channels, we collected 23 m of pre-Holocene lacustrine sediment from the Pukaki 1-01 core and 15 m from the Onepoto core. Paleomagnetic measurements were performed on these at the University of California, Davis. Environmental magnetic records from both cores provide insights into the eruptive history of the Auckland Volcanic Field. The lack of a tephrostratigraphic control in the lower portion of the cores, and the lack of similar trends in the magnetic parameters, prevented a complete core correlation. The main finding is that local basaltic tephra layers visible ...

We present a high-resolution paleomagnetic record from 682 discrete samples from Eltanin 27–21 (69.03°S 179.83°E), a 16-meter long piston core recovered in 1968 at a water depth of 3456 m by the USNS Eltanin as part of Operation Deep Freeze. After removal of a low-coercivity overprint, most samples yield stable characteristic remanent magnetization directions. The downhole variation in the magnetic inclination provides a well-resolved magnetostratigraphy from the Brunhes Chron (0–0.781 Ma), through the Reunion Subchron (2.128–2.148 Ma), and into Chron C2r.2r. The sedimentation rates are sufficiently high that even short-term geomagnetic features, like the Cobb Mountain excursion, are resolved. The record from Eltanin 27–21 provides new insights into the behavior of the geomagnetic field at high latitudes, about which very little is currently known. Using the variability in the inclinations during stable polarity intervals, we estimate that the dispersion in the paleomagnetic pole position over the past ~ 2 Myr is 30.3° ± 4.3°, which is significantly greater than observed at low to mid latitude sites. The higher dispersion observed at Eltanin 27–21 is consistent with numerical modeling of the geodynamo. That modeling has shown that polar vortices can develop in the Earth's core within the tangent cylinder, defined as the cylinder coaxial with the Earth's rotation axis and tangent to the inner core/outer core boundary. The polar vortices produce vigorous fluid motion in the core, which creates greater geomagnetic field variability above the tangent cylinder at the surface of the Earth. The tangent cylinder intersects the Earth's surface in the polar regions at 79.1° latitude, which is relatively close to the latitude of Eltanin 27–21.

The problem of aligning time series arises naturally in a number of fields, but our investigation is motivated by the problem of extracting a paleoclimatic signal from glacial varve chronologies. Glacial varves are laminated sediments that record annual depositional cycles in certain lakes that are fed by glaciers. Varve thickness is determined by temperature and to a lesser extent by precipitation so that an accurate reconstruction of varve chronologies can be regarded as providing a potential long term proxy for paleoclimate. An important aspect of the varve problem is to align series from different locations. What makes the alignment problem particularly interesting is that in either series, one or more varves may be missing or a single varve might have been mistaken for a pair of varves. Traditionally, alignment problems have been treated using linear methods and concepts such as coherency and cross correlation. Since one of the pairs of varve series we look at is not well described by a linear model, in this paper we also employ nonlinear criteria that are derived from recent work on nonlinear identification and dependence modeling. More precisely, we use nonlinear least squares and measures of dependence such as the Kullback—Leibler measure and the Hellinger distance. Both local and global alignment are considered, and in particular we treat the situation where one or more observations may be missing from either series. Properties of the criteria are given and illustrated by simulation. We display examples where linear methods fail, but nonlinear criteria work. For the real data set of varves at our disposal, it will be seen that the nonlinear criteria perform as well as (or better than) the linear ones for the linearly related series, and that only the nonlinear criteria work for the two series that are not linearly related. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

We consider a local least-squares criterion for aligning multiple time series fragments differing by locations and show the consistency of the time-lag estimator and the asymptotic normality of the location estimator. We apply the criterion to the problem of aligning 50 glacial varve fragments and construct a 3000-year surrogate for global temperature. Copyright 2007, Oxford University Press.

We conducted detailed rock magnetic investigations on 36 m of drill core collected during Ocean Drilling Program Leg 195 at Hole 1202B (24°48.24′N, 122°30.00′E), in the Southern Okinawa Trough, with the goal of extracting a reliable paleointensity signal with centennial resolution. An age-depth model was established from a chronology obtained by accelerator mass spectromety 14C dating. The sedimentary section spans almost the entire Holocene (0–9.4 kyr) and exhibits sedimentation rates close to 400 cm/kyr. The magnetic properties are dominated by stable, pseudo-single domain magnetite. High-field hysteresis data and the grain-size sensitive ratio of anhysteretic remanent magnetization (ARM) to low field magnetic susceptibility indicate a narrow range of grain sizes and concentrations. Magnetic parameters vary by a factor of 4 thereby fulfilling the usual criteria for a relative paleointensity study. The relative geomagnetic paleointensity was obtained by normalizing the intensity of natural remanent magnetization (NRM) by the ARM and the low field magnetic susceptibility. Both normalizations yield nearly identical results (r = 0.89). Spectral analysis indicates that the record is not significantly affected by local environmental conditions. Comparison of this West Pacific paleointensity curve with other curves suggests a geomagnetic origin for the signal. Millennial-scale features of our record correlate to variations of the archeomagnetic dipole moment. This suggest that the sediments at Hole1202B recorded changes of the geomagnetic field over the studied time interval.

Drilling offshore from Cape Roberts, Antarctica, has enabled recovery of a 1472-m cumulative record of late Eocene–early Miocene history of sedimentary basin development and climate change in the Western Ross Sea. In this paper, we synthesize the results of palaeomagnetic analyses carried out on the CRP-1, CRP-2 and CRP-3 sediment cores, and present a chronology for the recovered Eocene–Miocene succession. Stepwise demagnetization data demonstrate that secondary overprints have been successfully removed and that characteristic remanent magnetizations (ChRMs) have been clearly identified in most of the samples. A close sampling interval has allowed a detailed magnetic polarity stratigraphy to be established for the composite succession. Correlation with the geomagnetic polarity time scale (GPTS) has been constrained by a number of 40Ar/39Ar and 87Sr/86Sr ages, as well as by a recently developed Antarctic siliceous microfossil zonation, and by calcareous nannoplankton biostratigraphy. The basal sediments of the Eocene–Miocene succession rest unconformably on Devonian sandstones of the Beacon Supergroup. A basal sandstone breccia, which probably represents the onset of rifting in the Victoria Land Basin (VLB), is overlain by a succession of sandstones that are interbedded with thin conglomerate beds. These sediments give way to more clearly glacially influenced mudstones and diamictite facies in the mid Oligocene, and, by the Oligocene–Miocene boundary, coincident with the Mi-1 glaciation, a permanent glacial dominance was imprinted on the sedimentary record. Average sediment accumulation rates were initially rapid in the late Eocene–early Oligocene (up to 60 cm/k.y.), but reduced to only a few cm/k.y. in the early Miocene as basin subsidence slowed.

SUMMARY A mixed-polarity zone, representing alternations between remagnetized and non-remagnetized strata, has been documented within the lower few metres of the CRP-1 core (Ross Sea, Antarctica). Detailed rock magnetic investigation of this interval indicates that the normal polarity remagnetization is carried by magnetostatically interacting single-domain particles of a ferrimagnetic iron sulphide mineral, while the reversed-polarity magnetization of non-remagnetized strata is carried by magnetite with a broad range of grain sizes and negligible magnetostatic interactions. Scanning electron microscope observations of polished sections indicate that the ferrimagnetic iron sulphide mineral is greigite (Fe3S4). Based on microtextural relationships, it is not possible to determine the relative timing of formation for much of the greigite. However, a significant proportion of the greigite has grown on the surface of authigenic siderite (FeCO3) grains that occur as microconcretions and as cement surrounding detrital matrix grains. In such cases, microtextural relationships indicate that siderite post-dates early diagenetic pyrite and that greigite post-dates the siderite. Siderite usually forms in environments with abundant dissolved iron and carbonate, but without dissolved pore water H2S. This set of geochemical conditions occurs in methanic settings below the sulphate reduction zone (in which early diagenetic pyrite forms). We interpret the observed remagnetization of the lower part of the CRP-1 core as due to a late diagenetic pore water migration event where abundant iron on the surface of siderite grains reacted with fluids containing limited dissolved sulphide, thereby causing precipitation of greigite. The distribution of siderite (and associated greigite) in the lower part of the CRP-1 core is patchy, which accounts for the apparent alternation of polarities. This study is part of a growing catalogue of remagnetizations involving greigite, which suggests that occurrences of greigite should be treated with caution in palaeomagnetic and environmental magnetic studies.

Past climate has been interpreted from the loess–palaeosol record found in China. There is no argument that the palaeosols are more strongly weathered than the underlying less well-weathered loess and that these changes have been governed by glacial/interglacial climate fluctuations. However, the duration of pedogenesis may have also contributed to the development of palaeosol properties. Previous studies have not attempted to separate these two factors which both affect the intensity of soil formation, and have assumed that the degree of soil development and pedogenic magnetic susceptibility enhancement depended solely on the climate conditions. We show that the magnetic susceptibility enhancement of palaeosols of the lower Malan and upper Lishi Formations (S 1 –S 5 correlated to the interglacials of the past 620 ky) depends partly on the duration of pedogenesis. This suggests that pedogenic magnetic susceptibility enhancement of palaeosols should not be used for such direct palaeoclimate reconstructions as determining the amount of rainfall or the temperature of the soil-forming intervals. However, used in combination with other proxies (other magnetic properties, % Fe d , Fe d /Fe t , color indices, the depth of decalcification, particle size), magnetic properties of palaeosols and loess layers can provide valuable insight into climatic conditions of soil-forming episodes. It follows that multiproxy evidence provides better insight into climate dynamics than the interpretation of a single proxy.

Few Palaeogene and Neogene sediment cores from the Antarctic continental margin have been dated with sufficient precision to enable establishment of direct linkages between glacial events on the Antarctic continent and marked events in deep-sea [delta]18O records. As a result, much of our knowledge of the gradual, but stepwise, shift from 'greenhouse' climates of the Cretaceous to the 'ice-house' climates of the Quaternary is inferred from well-dated and more continuously deposited deep-sea sediments. In this study, we present new magnetostratigraphic results from the CIROS-1 drill core from McMurdo Sound, Antarctica, along with a reinterpretation of a published diatom biostratigraphic zonation that is constrained by correlation to a high-precision age model from the nearby CRP-2/2A drill core. Our results suggest that most of the upper 350 m of the CIROS-1 drill core represents rapid sediment accumulation during a short time interval spanning the Oligocene-Miocene boundary. Chronostratigraphic control is precise enough to enable correlation of this interval of glacimarine sedimentation with the Mi-1 deep-sea [delta]18O event, which confirms that the Mi-1 event was related to a major expansion of Antarctic ice. A major unconformity at 366 m in the CIROS-1 drill core, which is widely observed in regional seismic reflection studies, represents 9 Myr of missing time. This unconformity can be traced offshore into the Ross Sea using seismic stratigraphy and is interpreted to indicate significant East Antarctic ice sheet development during the Mi-1 glaciation. The stratigraphic expression of this ~400-kyr glacial event is evidently multiphase and complex in the Victoria Land Basin, probably because it was punctuated by higher-frequency orbitally induced glacial oscillations. The presence of Nothofagidites pollen throughout the CIROS-1 drill core and the presence of a Nothofagus (Southern beech) leaf within the early Miocene portion of the core indicate that Antarctic mean summer temperatures did not decrease below 5[deg]C throughout the Mi-1 glaciation. These temperatures are significantly warmer than present-day mean summer temperatures at sea level in McMurdo Sound. The persistence of a Nothofagus forest in coastal southern Victoria Land throughout this time interval suggests that the present state of deep refrigeration was not reached until some time after the Mi-1 glaciation

First-order reversal curve (FORC) diagrams provide a sensitive means of probing subtle variations in hysteresis behaviour, and can help advance our understanding of the mechanisms that give rise to hysteresis. In this paper, we use FORC diagrams to study hysteresis mechanisms in multi-domain (MD) particles. The classical domain wall (DW) pinning model due to Neel [Adv. Phys. 4 (1955) 191] is a phenomenological one-dimensional model in which a pinning function represents the interactions of a DW with the surrounding medium. Bertotti et al. [J. Appl. Phys. 85 (1999a) 4355] modelled this pinning function as a random Wiener–Levy (WL) process, where particle boundaries are neglected. The results of Bertotti et al. [J. Appl. Phys. 85 (1999a) 4355] predict a FORC diagram that consists of perfectly vertical contours, where the FORC distribution decreases with increasing microcoercivity. This prediction is consistent with our experimental results for transformer steel and for annealed MD magnetite grains, but it is not consistent with results for our MD grains that have not been annealed. Here, we extend the DW pinning model to include particle boundaries and an Ornstein–Uhlenbeck (OU) random process, which is more realistic that a WL process. However, this does not help to account for the hysteresis behaviour of the unannealed MD grains. We conclude that MD hysteresis is more complicated than the physical picture provided by the classical one-dimensional pinning model. It is not known what physical mechanism is responsible for the breakdown of the classical DW pinning model, but possibilities include DW interactions, DW nucleation and annihilation, and DW curvature. © 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

The Holocene section in Saanich Inlet, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, is 50–70 m thick. Cores from Saanich Inlet obtained during Leg 169S of the Ocean Drilling Program afford an excellent opportunity to obtain an ultrahigh-resolution paleomagnetic and environmental magnetic record for the Holocene and Late Pleistocene of western Canada. We have used an automated, long-core cryogenic magnetometer to study over 380 m of continuous u-channel samples from ODP Sites 1033 and 1034, the two sites that constitute Leg 169S. Holocene records of paleomagnetic inclination and intensity show excellent intra-site correlation and can be used to fine-tune the lithologic correlation among cores from each site. The Late Pleistocene magnetic records provide a means of intra-site correlation of the otherwise featureless marine clay. Near the Holocene/Late Pleistocene boundary, both sites contain a magnetic intensity feature that is interpreted as a Missoula-type flood event on the Fraser River. The composite Holocene inclination records from the two sites are quite similar and provide a means of comparing current age-models that are based on radiocarbon dating of material from each site. This comparison shows only minor differences in the available age-models. It also provides strong evidence that the sediments of Saanich Inlet represent a reliable record of geomagnetic field behavior.

Between 34 and 15 million years (Myr) ago, when planetary temperatures were 3–4 °C warmer than at present and atmospheric CO2 concentrations were twice as high as today1, the Antarctic ice sheets may have been unstable2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Oxygen isotope records from deep-sea sediment cores suggest that during this time fluctuations in global temperatures and high-latitude continental ice volumes were influenced by orbital cycles8, 9, 10. But it has hitherto not been possible to calibrate the inferred changes in ice volume with direct evidence for oscillations of the Antarctic ice sheets11. Here we present sediment data from shallow marine cores in the western Ross Sea that exhibit well dated cyclic variations, and which link the extent of the East Antarctic ice sheet directly to orbital cycles during the Oligocene/Miocene transition (24.1–23.7 Myr ago). Three rapidly deposited glacimarine sequences are constrained to a period of less than 450 kyr by our age model, suggesting that orbital influences at the frequencies of obliquity (40 kyr) and eccentricity (125 kyr) controlled the oscillations of the ice margin at that time. An erosional hiatus covering 250 kyr provides direct evidence for a major episode of global cooling and ice-sheet expansion about 23.7 Myr ago, which had previously been inferred from oxygen isotope data (Mi1 event5).

We used a partial heating/cooling method (Van Velzen and Dekkers, 1999) for the analysis of representative samples of the Holocene loess of the Chinese loess plateau, in order to investigate magnetic mineralogical changes during thermal treatment. The temperature-dependence of susceptibility (TDS) results show significant alteration of magnetic phases during heating and cooling, and provide further evidence that magnetite and maghemite are the dominant ferrimagnetic minerals in the Holocene eolian deposits of the loess plateau. The TDS measurements suggest that the degree of the thermally-induced alteration is closely related to pedogenesis, which is a function of climate, and thus the alteration itself could be a useful climate indicator. Our TDS results along a NW-SE transect in the loess plateau suggest that stronger pedogenesis results in higher content of maghemite and greater susceptibility decrease during thermal treatment. This behavior seems to indicate that the final product of pedogenic magnetite in Chinese loess and paleosols is maghemite, which plays an important role in the enhancement of the magnetic susceptibility of Chinese eolian deposits.

We have conducted mineral magnetic investigations of samples of modern dune sand, pristine loess and present-day loess along a NW-SE transect from the northern to the central loess plateau in China. The methods used include the temperature-dependence of susceptibility (TDS) before and after citrate-bicarbonate-dithionite (CBD) treatment as well as X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis. The XRD analyses demonstrate that magnetite and hematite both exist in the Chinese loess-paleosol sequence and its modem source area, but the TDS measurements show that magnetite is the predominant contributor to magnetic susceptibility. Maghemite is present in the pristine loess and the present-day loess due to pedogenesis. The pedogenic processes that produce the maghemite are closely linked to paleoclimate, and for this transect, precipitation appears to be the most important climatic variable. We suggest that TDS can be used as a useful method for the analysis of pedogenesis and climatic change.

SUMMARY Magnetic susceptibility variations in the Chinese loess/palaeosol sequences have been used extensively for palaeoclimatic interpretations. The magnetic signal of these sequences must be divided into lithogenic and pedogenic components because the palaeoclimatic record is primarily reflected in the pedogenic component. In this paper we compare two methods for separating the pedogenic and lithogenic components of the magnetic susceptibility signal: the citrate-bicarbonate-dithionite (CBD) extraction procedure, and a mixing analysis. Both methods yield good estimates of the pedogenic component, especially for the palaeosols. The CBD procedure underestimates the lithogenic component and overestimates the pedogenic component. The magnitude of this eect is moderately high in loess layers but almost negligible in palaeosols. The mixing model overestimates the lithogenic component and underestimates the pedogenic component. Both methods can be adjusted to yield better estimates of both components. The lithogenic susceptibility, as determined by either method, suggests that palaeoclimatic interpretations based only on total susceptibility will be in error and that a single estimate of the average lithogenic susceptibility is not an accurate basis for adjusting the total susceptibility. A long-term decline in lithogenic susceptibility with depth in the section suggests more intense or prolonged periods of weathering associated with the formation of the older palaeosols. The CBD procedure provides the most comprehensive information on the magnitude of the components and magnetic mineralogy of loess and palaeosols. However, the mixing analysis provides a sensitive, rapid, and easily applied alternative to the CBD procedure. A combination of the two approaches provides the most powerful and perhaps the most accurate way of separating the magnetic susceptibility components.

quence from Jiaodao, Shanxi province. The pedogenic magnetic grains, including maghemite and fine-grained magnetite, can be effectively removed by CBD, and the lithogenic magnetic grains (mainly mutidomain magnetite) are nearly intact during CBD treatment. Our results suggest that the CBD technique is useful in distinguishing pedogenic contributions to the susceptibilities and that TDS can be used as a useful method for the analysis of susceptibility enhancement and pedogenesis in Chinese loess and paleosols. Thus, it could be concluded that the CBD technique provides a strong support for the pedogenic model of susceptibility enhancement and eolian origin of Chinese loess and paleosols. Especially, the combination study using CBD and TDS methods suggests that the maghemite grains produced due to pedogenesis make significant contributions to the enhanced susceptibility of loess and paleosols.

Sediments recovered from the most seaward site of the Baja Transect of the California Margin (ODP Leg 167) yielded a high-fidelity magnetostratigraphic record spanning the last 6 Myr. Using a long-core cryogenic magnetometer, we made NRM measurements of 59 u-channel samples, which cover the interval from 0 to 78.5 mcd (metres composite depth) of the spliced section of Holes 1010C and 1010E. Stepwise AF demagnetization between 20 and 60 mT showed that the remanence is essentially composed of a single stable component, which was not affected by a coring-induced magnetization. The investigated section can be divided into at least 25 polarity intervals, which are assigned to the chrons from C3A.n2 to the Brunhes (C1n). The sedimentation rate was nearly constant at about 13 m Myr−1, except for a reduction to 9 m Myr−1 between 4 and 5 Ma. ARM and IRM measurements of the u-channels revealed that the sediments below 23 mcd exhibit sharp drops in magnetic concentration at several horizons, but that the upper part has a relatively uniform magnetic concentration, containing magnetite of pseudo-single-domain size. The upper interval yielded consistent relative intensity records when normalized with ARM, IRM and shipboard susceptibility data. Several peaks in the relative intensity variations correspond to drops in the S ratio, in particular at 0.1 T, or to anomalous peaks in the IRM and magnetic susceptibility profiles, suggesting that the normalized intensity record is partly influenced by episodic changes in the flux of magnetic grains. The normalized intensity for the intervals younger than 1.2 Ma shows similarities with published palaeointensity records from the equatorial Pacific, including results from ODP Leg 138. In particular, the intensity minima at 0.05, 0.11, 0.18 and 0.29 Ma and those associated with the onset and termination of the Jaramillo subchron are well correlated.

We demonstrate a powerful and practical method of characterizing interactions in fine magnetic particle systems utilizing a class of hysteresis curves known as first order reversal curves. This method is tested on samples of highly dispersed magnetic particles, where it leads to a more detailed understanding of interactions than has previously been possible. In a quantitative comparison between this method and the δM method, which is based on the Wohlfarth relation, our method provides a more precise measure of the strength of the interactions. Our method also has the advantage that it can be used to decouple the effects of the mean interaction field from the effects of local interaction field variance.

SUMMARY The onset of continent-wide glaciation in Antarctica is still poorly understood, despite being one of the most important palaeoclimatic events in the Cenozoic. The Eocene/ Oligocene boundary interval has recently been recognized as a critical time for Antarctic climatic evolution, and it may mark the preglacial‐glacial transition. Magnetic susceptibility, intensity of natural and artificial remanences, hysteresis parameters and magnetic anisotropy of the lower half (late Eocene/early Oligocene) of the CIROS-1 core (from McMurdo Sound, Antarctica) reveal alternating intervals of high and low magnetic mineral concentrations that do not correspond to lithostratigraphic units in the core. Pseudo-single-domain magnetite is the main magnetic mineral throughout the sequence, and sharp changes in magnetite concentration match changes in clay mineralogy beneath and at the Eocene/Oligocene boundary. The detrital magnetite originated from weathering of the Ferrar Group (which comprises basic extrusive and intrusive igneous rocks). Weathering processes and input of magnetite to the Victoria Land Basin were intense during periods when the Antarctic climate was warmer than today, but during intervals when the climate was relatively cool, chemical weathering of the Ferrar Group was suppressed and input of detrital magnetite to the Victoria Land Basin decreased. Our results also indicate that a cold and dry climate was not established in Antarctica until the Eocene/Oligocene boundary, with major ice sheet growth occurring at the early/late Oligocene boundary. Some earlier cold intervals are identified, which indicate that climate had begun to deteriorate by the middle/late Eocene boundary.

A previously unsampled outcrop of gently dipping or flat-lying Upper Cretaceous sedimentary strata in the Vancouver Island region, which contains unaltered aragonitic mollusk fossils, yielded a stable remanent magnetization that is biostratigraphically consistent with Cretaceous magnetochrons 33R, 33N, and 32R. These results, characterized by shallow inclinations, indicate an Upper Cretaceous paleolatitude of about 25 ± 3 degrees north, which is equivalent to that of modern-day Baja California. These findings are consistent with the Baja–British Columbia hypothesis, which puts the Insular Superterrane well south of the Oregon-California border in the Late Cretaceous.

Deep Impact? On 15 February 2013, the Russian district of Chelyabinsk, with a population of more than 1 million, suffered the impact and atmospheric explosion of a 20-meter-wide asteroid—the largest impact on Earth by an asteroid since 1908. Popova et al. (p. 1069 , published online 7 November; see the Perspective by Chapman ) provide a comprehensive description of this event and of the body that caused it, including detailed information on the asteroid orbit and atmospheric trajectory, damage assessment, and meteorite recovery and characterization.

Authigenic greigite (Fe 3 S 4 ) has been identified in several horizons of lake beds in a 102-m core from Butte Valley, northern California, using mineral magnetic methods and x-ray diffraction analysis. The presence of greigite has several implications for the paleoenvironmental record from Butte Valley. First, its occurrence in 2.5-3.0 Ma strata confirms that greigite can persist in the geological record for long periods of time. Second, the detrital mineral magnetic record may be partially obscured by the presence of authigenic greigite and care must be taken in interpreting magnetic variations in the greigite-bearing zones as paleoclimate proxies. Third, differences in the timing of remanence acquisition for authigenic and detrital phases may compromise studies of high-frequency geomagnetic field variations. Fourth, greigite may also be significant as a paleoenvironmental indicator of lake and sediment chemistry. The magnetic detection of greigite may therefore provide important information about paleolimnological conditions.

Mineral magnetic properties of soils can be strongly influenced by soil-forming factors. Understanding how climate influences magnetic transformations in soils may offer insight into paleoclimate and the pedologic history of landscapes. Based on our experience with soils in California and Hawaii, we have developed a conceptual model of the pathways that can lead to enhancement of the magnetic susceptibility in soils. We base our model on three sources of iron in soils: magnetite, maghemite, and other iron-bearing minerals. We find that preferential accumulation, transformation (diagenesis), lessivage, neoformation (authigenesis), and solubilization are the main processes that convert the primary lithogenic minerals inherited from soil parent material to the secondary pedogenic minerals found in the solum. Biosynthesis is included in the model but does not appear to be an important process in aerobic soil environments. Our model shows that a major process in the enhancement of eluvial and illuvial horizons is neoformation of secondary magnetite and maghemite resulting from precipitation of iron from the soil solution. The processes and products in the model are independent of whether the parent material is transported (alluvium or loess) or residuum. For the soils that we have studied, the rates of susceptibility enhancement are shown to be dependent on climate and parent material.

We have related the mineral magnetic properties of some archaeological samples to the quality of the paleointensity data that they produce. We find that samples which have broad unblocking temperature distributions and most of their remanences unblocked at intermediate temperatures produce high-quality paleointensity data. This conclusion is based on a comparative study of pottery samples which had previously produced reliable and unreliable paleointensity data. For each sample, we determined the magnetic mineralogy and the magnetic domain state. In all cases, magnetite (or titanomagnetite) is the primary magnetic carrier, with domain states that extend from superparamagnetic to single domain, and maybe even to pseudo-single domain. We believe that the magnetic grain size distribution of these samples produces a broad unblocking temperature distribution. The advantage of having such a distribution is that high-quality data can be obtained before the onset of the mineralogical changes that can occur at high temperatures with the Thellier and Thellier method. The frequency-dependent susceptibility appears to be useful as a non-destructive estimator of the unblocking temperature distribution for samples having only magnetite as the magnetic mineral.

Rock magnetic studies of complex systems that contain mixtures of magnetic minerals or mixed grain size distributions have demonstrated the need for a better method of distinguishing between different magnetic components in geological materials. Hysteresis loops that are constricted in the middle section, but are wider above and below the middle section, are commonly observed in mixed magnetic assemblages. Such “wasp-waisted” hysteresis loops have been widely documented, particularly with respect to rare earth permanent magnets, basaltic lava flows, remagnetized Paleozoic carbonate rocks, and an increasingly wide range of other rocks. Our modelling, combined with a review of previous work, indicates that there are several conditions that give rise to, as well as magnetic properties that are characteristic of, wasp-waisted hysteresis loops. First, at least two magnetic components with strongly contrasting coercivities must coexist. This condition can arise from either mixtures of grain sizes of a single magnetic mineral, or a combination of magnetic minerals with contrasting cocrcivities, or a combination of these two situations. Second, materials that give rise to wasp-waisted hysteresis loops will have relatively high ratios of the coercivity of remanence to coercive force (B cr /B c ) because B0 is controlled by the soft (low coercivity) component, whereas Bcris controlled by the hard (high coercivity) component. Third, values of B cr /B c ? 10 usually only occur for strongly wasp-waisted loops when the low coercivity component comprises an overwhelmingly large fraction of the total volume of magnetic grains. Fourth, a given mixture of superparamagnetic and single-domain (SD) grains is more likely to give rise to wasp-waisted hysteresis loops than an equivalent mixture of SD and multidomain grains. Fifth, our results provide empirical confirmation that the total magnetization of a material is the sum of the weighted contributions of each component, in the absence of significant magnetic interaction between particles. Thus to contribute significantly to wasp-waisted behavior, a mineral magnetic component must give rise to a significant portion of the total magnetization of the rock. As a result, minerals with weak magnetic moments such as hematite need to occur in large concentrations to cause wasp-waistedness in materials that also contain ferrimagnetic minerals. We outline a method for determining the magnetic components that can give rise to wasp-waisted hysteresis loops. This method is based on high- and low-temperature magnetic measurements that are used to identify the dominant remanence-bearing mineral/s and on mineral magnetic techniques that are used to discriminate between different magnetic domain states. The method is illustrated with several examples from archaeological, geological, and synthetic materials.

SUMMARY We have studied the magnetic properties of 69 loess and palaeosol samples from the loess plateau in China. Our methodology involves the combination of differential dissolution of secondary iron oxides and oxyhydroxides using citrate-bicarbonatedithionite (CBD) with measurements of magnetic parameters. Because most of these parameters are additive, we can use pre- and post-CBD values to determine the mineral magnetic properties of the CBD-soluble material. We can also calculatc the partitioning of iron atnong various phases. Approximately two-thirds of the total iron in our samples exists as paramagnetic iron in silicate minerals. Antiferromagnetic material (haematite) constitutes almost all of the remainder. However, the magnetic susceptibility record of the loess/palaeosol sequence arises primarily lrom a small amount of iron in ferrimagnetic phases. This iron consists of a CBD-resistant component which rcpresents multidomain grains inherited from the parent material of the loess, and a CBD-soluble component which represents grains near the superparamagnetic/single domain boundary. The first component appears in nearly uniform amounts throughout the loess column and is the dominant ferrimagnetic phase in the magnetically less-enhanced loess. Accumulation of the second component in the palaeosols gives rise to the magnetic susceptibility enhancement of the loess column. The magnetic properties of the CBD-soluble component indicate that it formed as a result of in sitir pedogenesis, which confirms our earlier conclusion that the palaeoclimate record of the loess/palaeosol sequence at the sites that we have sampled is primarily a record of pedogenesis.

Outcrops of shallow marine sedimentary rocks of the Neogene Purisima Formation and Santa Cruz Mudstone occur throughout the Santa Cruz Mountains and along the coast of Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties in California. Within the Santa Cruz Mountains, the Purisima Formation has been extensively folded and offset by reverse faults. Along the coast, the Purisima Formation and Santa Cruz Mudstone are only gently folded although the Purisima Formation is cut by the San Gregorio Fault Zone. Previous paleomagnetic studies have shown that vertical axis rotation has occurred within some parts of the San Gregorio Fault Zone. As part of a kinematic study of the San Gregorio Fault Zone, this paleomagnetic investigation of the Purisima Formation and Santa Cruz Mudstone was conducted to determine the extent of vertical axis rotation. The characteristic paleomagnetic directions of the Purisima Formation and Santa Cruz Mudstone, which we interpret as the primary directions, indicate that a clockwise vertical axis rotation of 35° to 60° has occurred throughout the San Gregorio Fault Zone, whereas no rotation has occurred away from the fault zone. This result suggests that vertical axis rotation is fundamentally related to shear across the San Gregorio Fault Zone. Our work also indicates that while the Purisima Formation and Santa Cruz Mudstone along the coast have retained their primary magnetizations, the Purisima Formation within the Santa Cruz Mountains has been remagnetized after folding.

Mineral magnetic properties of soils and parent materials have been interpreted in terms of paleoclimate and rates of soil formation but it is important to understand which minerals contribute to the mineral magnetic signal. Citrate-bicarbonate-dithionite (CBD) treatment has been used to determine the amounts of fine-grained, often pedogenic, ferrimagnetic minerals relative to coarse-grained, often inherited, magnetic minerals. However, questions have been raised about the effect of particle size on the efficacy of CBD in dissolving magnetite and maghemite grains. In this paper we use magnetic susceptibility and its frequency dependence, and the low-temperature behavior of a saturation isothermal remanent magnetization, to track the dissolution of carefully sized magnetite grains. We found that the standard CBD procedure dissolves fine magnetite particles (ca. 1 etm) essentially intact. Thin oxidized coatings, presumably maghemite, are also dissolved by the CBD procedure. These results support previous interpretations that the CBD procedure can be used to distinguish between pedogenic and lithogenic magnetic grains, assuming that most pedogenic magnetic grains are sufficiently small (ca. 1 /im). These results also show that the standard procedure is too harsh to differentiate between 1 grm grains of magnetite and maghemite. A modified CBD extraction that uses half as much dithionite reduces the magnetic susceptibility of 1 Jam magnetite grains by only 10%. This method may be useful in distinguishing between magnetite and maghemite grains in this size range.

In a previous paper, we used powder X-ray diffraction and changes in magnetic susceptibility to argue the importance of pedogenic maghemite to soils and the efficacy of the chemical extractant citrate-bicarbonate-dithionite (CBD) to preferentially remove pedogenic maghemite from soil samples while not removing coarse-grained magnetite. Although X-ray diffraction provides strong support for this contention, M6ssbauer spectroscopy is the method of choice for determining the oxidation state of iron in minerals and for inferring mineralogy of the iron oxide phases. Our objective in this work was to seek confirming evidence of the importance of maghemite as a pedogenic mineral and the usefulness of the CBD procedure in separating pedogenic maghemite from lithogenic magnetite. We present M6ssbauer data on magnetic fractions from pre- and post-CBD treated soil samples. Six of the l0 samples had only maghemite as the sextet component and after CBD treatment, four lost between 96 and 100% of the magnetic susceptibility. Two samples were interpreted as highly oxidized magnetite or a mixture of magnetite and maghemite. We cannot distinguish between these with M6ssbauer spectroscopy. In the remaining two samples, iron existed as hematite, ilmenite, magnetite and minor (< 10%) amounts of maghemite. Our results provide additional support for pedogenic maghemite in soils and for the pref- erential removal of maghemite by the CBD procedure.

The Meteor That Fell to Earth In April 2012, a meteor was witnessed over the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California. Jenniskens et al. (p. 1583 ) used a combination of photographic and video images of the fireball coupled with Doppler weather radar images to facilitate the rapid recovery of meteorite fragments. A comprehensive analysis of some of these fragments shows that the Sutter's Mill meteorite represents a new type of carbonaceous chondrite, a rare and primitive class of meteorites that contain clues to the origin and evolution of primitive materials in the solar system. The unexpected and complex nature of the fragments suggests that the surfaces of C-class asteroids, the presumed parent bodies of carbonaceous chondrites, are more complex than previously assumed.

New paleomagnetic, lithologic, and stratigraphic data are presented from the sediments of Lake Chewaucan in the Summer Lake Basin, Oregon. The new data place better age constraints on the sediments and improve the accuracy of the previously published paleomagnetic record from this locality. A complex, yet distinct, waveform is observed in all three components of the paleomagnetic vector. The waveform begins as the 180–190 ka Pringle Falls/Long Valley/Summer Lake II geomagnetic excursion and continues for two cycles after the excursion, until the record is interrupted by an unconformity that we correlate to the oxygen isotope stage 6/5e boundary. The waveform's directional morphology in virtual geomagnetic pole (VGP) space is defined by two clockwise loops followed by a distinctive counterclockwise, clockwise, counterclockwise looping sequence. The VGP paths of the two cycles after the excursion are rotated 180° about Earth's spin axis with respect to the VGP paths of the excursion cycle. The waveform also consists of a relative paleointensity variation which repeats during the two cycles after the excursion. The average paleointensity of the postexcursion waveform repetitions is high relative to the extremely low values that occur during the excursion. This observation indicates that excursion-initiated secular variations can occur after the field fully recovers from the low intensities which commonly typify excursions. Because of the similarities noted previously between this excursion and full polarity transitions (Trie et al., 1991), our new observations constrain models for a wide range of field behavior including polarity transitions, excursions, and secular variation.

We studied sixteen basalt samples from a landslide in the Columbia River Gorge to determine if they had acquired a thermoviscous remanent magnetism (TVRM) since the slide was emplaced about 800 years ago. All samples were thermally demagnetized at 20 heating steps until 360°C, where a large change in susceptibilit y was noted. Analysis of the directional changes during demagnetization indicates that the samples contain up to four TVRM components, in addition to an NRM component. The TVRM components with the lowest blocking temperatures are tightly clustered around the present field direction while the NRM directions are consistent with a random distribution, as expected for a landslide deposit. Measurements of hysteresis parameters and thermomagnetic analyses of the samples demonstrate that the dominant magnetic mineral in the basalt is single- domain magnetite. The temperature at which the first TVRM component was removed ranges from 70°C to 100°C. This result can be compared to nomographs that relate the time and temperature used to demagnetize a TVRM with the time and temperature at which the TVRM was acquired. Our results are more consistent with the nomograph of Pullaiah et al. (1975) than with the nomograph of Middleton & Schmidt (1982).

Tilted dikes occur within the pillow lava, sheeted dike, and gabbroic sections of 1 million-year-old, fast spread oceanic crust exposed on the walls of the Hess Deep Rift. During recent Alvin dives, oriented samples from both tilted and vertical dikes were collected from several of the outcrops. These are the first oriented paleomagnetic samples ever collected directly from outcrops on the ocean floor and were obtained with the help of a specially constructed geological compass. Remanent magnetic inclinations measured on the dike samples are significantly different from the near-horizontal inclinations expected. The present attitudes of the dikes and their remanent magnetizations indicate that the dikes have been technically rotated since their intrusion. Submersible observations from other dive programs that examined parts of nearby escarpments suggest that the structural complexity observed in the Alvin study areas may be only a local phenomenon, or at least, not a pervasive characteristic of oceanic crust. Although tectonic rotations such as those observed may have taken place as a result of the opening of the Hess Deep Rift, crosscutting vertical dikes and other geologic considerations suggest that substantial tectonic rotations occurred at or very near the East Pacific Rise axis, probably as a result of intermittent axial collapse. The observed structures suggest that tectonic processes beneath fast spreading ridges and the internal structure of crust produced at them may be significantly more complex than previously assumed.

SUMMARY Detailed palaeomagnetic and rock magnetic studies of a 15 m succession of MiddlelLate Pleistocene lacustrine sediments from ancient Lake Chewaucan, southern Oregon, western United States, indicate that the remanence-bearing grains are sufficiently uniform to be applicable to relative palaeointensity studies. We have used ARM, SIRM and x for normalization of the NRM. All three parameters give essentially identical results in their relative stratigraphic variations, which indicates that the normalizations efficiently remove the effects of variation in magnetic mineral concentration. Patterns in grain-size variation, as indicated by small-scale quasi-cyclic fluctuations in hysteresis parameters, may be due to environmental changes such as lake-level variation. However, these fluctuations are within the acceptable range of grain sizes for palaeointensity studies and cannot be correlated with any of the features of the normalized remanence record. We therefore conclude that the large-scale variations in the normalized remanence record are due to geomagnetic palaeointensity fluctuations. Parts of the normalized remanence record, where firm chronological constraints exist, may correlate with features of relative palaeointensity records from deep-sea sediments. Our results also confirm the observation that low geomagnetic field intensities dominate during geomagnetic excursions. Further studies of relative palaeointensity of the geomagnetic field may enable the development of an independent time-scale which would make possible the direct correlation of palaeoclimate records from deep-sea and continental environments.