Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) dating of glacial sediments from Arctic Russia - depositional bleaching and methodological aspects

Optical dating has been extensively used for stratigraphical correlation in the reconstruction of Eurasian ice-sheet dynamics and palaeoenvironmental changes during the last glaciation. In recent terrestrial studies in Arctic Russia, Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) is the main chronological tool, and has been used across the whole of the Eurasian north. We report new OSL ages obtained on glaciofluvial and glaciolacustrine sediments from the Arkhangelsk and Taymyr regions of Arctic Russia and discuss the characteristics of the quartz OSL signal in terms of its saturation limit, variability among samples from the same location, and initial signal resetting in different depositional environments. It is shown that effect of partial bleaching in our mainly Weichselian samples is trivial because: modern analogues are well zeroed; there is good agreement between OSL and ¹⁴C ages in young samples; and skewness in the dose distribution of relatively older samples is mainly due to varying shapes of the growth curves. The overall reliability of the OSL ages from Arctic Russia, when compared with the limited independent age controls available, appears to be good.     

Kilometre‐scale sand injectites in the intracratonic Murzuq Basin (South‐west Libya): an igneous trigger?

Mount Telout, situated at the edge of the Murzuq Basin, is a 325 m high conical hill within a circular collapse structure that records 0·5 km³ of sand intrusion into Silurian shales. Based on a comparison with other similar circular collapse structures around the Murzuq Basin, it is argued that sand injection in the form of pipes occurred during the Devonian. The overpressures triggering the process are inferred to result from a combination of: (i) tectonic uplift at a basin scale that initially focused regional ground water flows; and (ii) igneous intrusion within the sand‐rich Cambrian–Ordovician strata. The palaeorelief buried under the regionally extensive Silurian shales may have locally focused overpressures and localized sand injection at the 1 to 10 km scale. The Mount Telout injected sandbody and related features offer exceptional, seismic‐scale outcrop analogues for sand injections that are often identified in seismic reflection data. Large‐scale sand injections might be essential in petroleum exploration of the North African Lower Palaeozoic basins as they form seal‐bypass systems.