Glaciotectonised Quaternary sediments at Cape Shpindler, Yugorski Peninsula, Arctic Russia: implications for glacial history, ice movements

• Main Authors: Kara Sea, Ice Sheet, Hanna Lokrantz, Steven L. Forman
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arctic; Kara Sea; Shpindler; glacier; Ice; Novaya Zemlya; permafrost
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.503.6956

position for recording overriding ice sheets during past glaciations in the Kara Sea area, either from the Kara Sea shelf or the uplands of Yugorski Peninsula/Polar Urals. This study on Late Quaternary glacial stratigraphy and glaciotectonic structures of the Cape Shpindler coastal cliffs records two glacier advances and two ice-free periods older than the Holocene. During interglacial conditions, a sequence of marine to fluvial sediments was deposited. This was followed by a glacial event when ice moved southwards from an ice-divide over Novaya Zemlya and overrode and disturbed the interglacial sediments. After a second period of fluvial deposition, under interstadial or interglacial conditions, the area was again subject to glacial overriding, with the ice moving northwards from an inland ice divide. The age-control suggests that the older glacial event could possibly belong to marine oxygen isotope stage (MOIS) 8, Drenthe (300–250 ka), and that the underlying interglacial sediments might be Holsteinian (>300 ka). One implication of this is that relict glacier ice, buried in sediments and incorporated into the permafrost, may survive several interglacial and interstadial