Radiocarbon and thermoluminescence ages in the Mt. Riiser-Larsen area, Enderby Land, East Antarctica

• Main Authors: Takada,Masashi, Miura,Hideki, Zwartz,Daniel Peter
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Published: Department of Socio-geographical and Environmental Studies, Nara Women's University/National Institute of Polar Research/Research School of Earth Science, The Australian National University 1998
• Subjects: AMS^<14>C age; TL dating; East Antarctica; Richardson Clay; till deposits; Transantarctic Mountains; Tula; Prince Charles Mountains; Riiser-Larsen; Napier; Napier Mountains; Antarc*; Antarctica; Enderby Land; Ice Sheet; Polar geoscience
• Online Access: https://nipr.repo.nii.ac.jp/?action=repository_uri&item_id=3031; http://id.nii.ac.jp/1291/00003031/; https://nipr.repo.nii.ac.jp/?action=repository_action_common_download&item_id=3031&item_no=1&attribute_id=18&file_no=1

Varved organic clay (Richardson Clay) and thin coatings of calcite attached to rocks within thick till deposits (Tula Till) in the Mt Riiser-Larsen area, East Antarctica, were dated by accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon and thermolummescence (TL) dating AMS^<14>C ages corrected by the δ^<13>C values m this study are 40250 ±1200 y BP for the varved organic clay and 42570 ± 670 y BP for the calcite samples Although there is a possibility that these ages might be too young due to contamination by younger carbon or other factors, it seems hard to regard the true age of crystallization of the calcite as much older than the Last Interglacial Stage from the provisional result of TL dating In East Antarctica, ice thickness and extent during the Last Glacial Stage is assumed to have been very much less than was earlier hypothesized, and the thick glacial deposits in the Mt Riiser-Larsen area have been supposed to be a correlative of the thick late-Pliocene deposits in the Transantarctic mountains and the Prince Charles mountains The result of this study, however, suggests that in a region like the Mt Riiser-Larsen area where ice comes mainly from the coastal area around the Napier mountains, the possibility of a re-advance of the ice sheet and/or deposition of thick glacial tills during the late-Pleistocene should be taken into account