Abstract
Ice-sheet and sea-level fluctuations during the Early and Middle Pleistocene are as yet poorly understood. A stalactite from a karst cave in North West Sicily (Italy) provides the first evidence of four marine inundations that correspond to relative sea-level highstands at the time of the Middle Pleistocene Transition. The speleothem is located ∼97 m above mean sea level as result of Quaternary uplift. Its section reveals three marine hiatuses and a coral overgrowth that fixes the age of final marine ingression at 1.124 ± 0.2, thus making this speleothem the oldest stalactite with marine hiatuses ever studied to date. Scleractinian coral species witness light-limited conditions and water depth of 20–50 m. Integrating the coral-constrained depth with the geologically constrained uplift rate and an ensemble of RSL scenarios, we find that the age of the last marine ingression most likely coincides with Marine Isotope Stage 35 on the basis of a probabilistic assessment. Our findings are consistent with a significant Antarctic ice-sheet retreat.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 92-100 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | Quaternary Science Reviews |
Volume | 173 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Oct 2017 |
Funding
We are thankful to David Richards, Christian Ohneiser and Enrico Di Stefano for their helpful comments. This work was partly financially supported by the grant “ Fondo Finalizzato alla Ricerca 2012/2013 ( CUP B71J12001450001 )” funded by the University of Palermo (Italy) . Bas de Boer is funded by NWO Earth and Life Sciences (ALW), project 863.15.019.
Funders | Funder number |
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Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek | 863.15.019 |
Università degli Studi di Palermo |
Keywords
- Sr/Sr ages
- Corals
- Interglacial(s)
- Pleistocene
- Sea level changes
- Speleothems
- Stable isotopes
- U-Th dating
- Western Europe