Evidence of Late Pleistocene ice-dammed lakes in West Siberia

The article discusses geological data on proglacial lakes and spillways in the West Siberian Plain, data on crucial features of the Late Pleistocene reorganization of the drainage pattern of northern Eurasia. The discussion focuses on Late Pleistocene sediments along the margin of the last ice sheet and south of it, including new data recently obtained by the Russian-Norwegian project PECHORA in Trans-Uralia. Based on these data, the margin of the last ice sheet in the western and central parts of West Siberia is localized well above the Arctic Circle, i.e. 150-250 km north of the previously suggested ice limit. The available geochronological evidence indicates that the last ice dam across West Siberia, which diverted the great Siberian rivers to the south, appeared at early stages of the last, Weichselian ice age. The normal, northbound, drainage was restored later, within the time-span accessible to radiocarbon dating, when two pre-Holocene river terraces with mammal fauna were formed. The Late Weichselian was the driest period with ubiquitous aeolian activity and an absence of large water bodies. Preceding ice-dammed lakes of West Siberia could only drain through the Turgai valley which leads southward into the Aral and Caspian seas. The sedimentary sequence of this passage consists of lacustrine clay, diamictic gravity flows and aeolian sediments younger than 29 kyr which infilled the former spillway mainly in the Late Weichselian. The basal sand and gravel mantling the bedrock floor, which descends from 55 m a.s.l. at 55°N to 30-40 m a.s.l. in the south, is the only signature of a southward drainage. This fluvial episode probably reflects overflow of a Siberian proglacial lake whose water level could reach 60 m a.s.l. prior to 29 kyr BP.