AMS radiocarbon measurements from the Swedish varved clays.

• Main Authors: Wohlfarth, Barbara, Possnert, Goran
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Radiocarbon 2000
• Subjects: River Angermanalven;glaciolacustrine environment;Baltic Sea;lower Holocene;glacial environment;lacustrine environment;accelerator mass spectra;ice sheets;planar bedding structures;sedimentary structures;varves;Atlantic Ocean;North Atlantic;mass spectra;spectra;Holocene;correlation;chronology;glacial geology;Pleistocene;upper Pleistocene;Europe;Western Europe;Scandinavia;Sweden;sediments;Cenozoic;Quaternary;methods;clastic sediments;clay;C 14;carbon;dates;isotopes;radioactive isotopes;absolute age; Ice Sheet; North Atlantic; Northern Sweden
• Online Access: https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/radiocarbon/article/view/3825

The Swedish varve chronology, or Swedish Time Scale, is an annual chronology based upon the successive correlation of more than 1000 varve-thickness diagrams. The Late Glacial-Early Holocene varved clays were deposited as glaciolacustrine sediments in the Baltic Sea during the recession of the Scandinavian ice sheet. Formation of varved clays continued throughout the Holocene and is still going on in the estuary of River Angermanalven in northern Sweden. Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon measurements, which have been performed on terrestrial plant macrofossils extracted from the varved clays, show--in comparison with other annual chronologies--that several hundreds of varve years are missing in the varve chronology. These findings are supported by, among others, pollen stratigraphic investigations on time-equivalent varve year intervals. If an effort were undertaken to evaluate the erroneous parts, the Swedish Time Scale would have the potential of becoming a continuous annual chronology.