Glacial drainage towards the Mediterranean during the Middle and Late Pleistocene

To a varying degree the Middle and Late Pleistocene ice sheets in northern Eurasia redirected the drainage of major catchments in Europe and western Siberia from the North Sea and Arctic Ocean south to the Caspian, Black Sea, and ultimately the Mediterranean. During the Late Weichselian, glacial meltwater reached the Mediterranean through the Dniepr and Don catchments and to a minor extent through the Danube. During the Warthe Substage of the Saalian, meltwater from the Volga was most likely added. During the Drenthe Substagc of the Saalian the watershed shifted Par to the east, and meltwater reached the Mediterranean also from the Oh. Irtysh, Yenisei, and Tunguska catchments in Siberia. Depending on the extent of the ice sheets, the increase in freshwater supply during deglaciations resulted in reductions of Mediterranean overflow into the North Atlantic. Such overflow reductions may have reduced vapour transport to the ice sheets and thus accelerated wastage.     

Zur massenspektrometrischen Bestimmung von Gasen des Systems C-H-O aus Mineralen

Zusammenfassung Die massenspektrometrische Analyse kleinster Gasmengen von H₂, O₂, CO, CO₂, CH₄ und H₂O ist infolge der Beeinflussung durch das Meßsystem mit beachtlichen Schwierigkeiten verbunden. Die Beeinflussung erfolgt einerseits durch Reaktionen der Gase mit heißen Metalloberflächen und andererseits durch im System vorhandene Glasoberflächen. Bei einer entprechenden apparativen Anordnung, Erhitzen der Proben und Trennung der Gase durch Kühlfallen, können Gasmengen in und auf Mineralen bis zu 0,005 mm³/NDT quantitativ bestimmt werden. Die Apparatur ist durch thermische Zersetzung von Muskovit-, Calcitkristallen usw. geeicht. Die Anwendung dieser Methode auf das Gebiet der Chemie und Mineralogie sowie die Grenzen und Möglichkeiten einer quantitativen Analyse von Restgasen wird gezeigt.

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Mass-spectrometric analysis of gases of the system C-H-O in minerals

Summary The analysis by mass-spectrometer of smallest amounts of gases H₂, O₂, CO, CO₂, CH₄ and H₂O, respectively, meets with considerable difficulties, because of the influence by the measuring system. The influence is caused by interactions of the gases with hot metal surfaces on one hand, and glass surfaces on the other hand. By a suitable arrangement of apparatus and procedures, such as heating the samples and separating the gases by cooling traps, the gas amounts in and on minerals can be quantitatively determined up to 0.005 mm³/SPT. The apparatus is calibrated by thermal dissociation of crystals like muscovite, calcite etc. The application of this method in chemistry and mineralogy is treated as well as the limits and the possibility of the quantitative analysis of residual gas.

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Soil geochemistry of Mother Lode-type gold deposits in the Hodson mining district, central California, U.S.A.

The Hodson mining district is in the westernmost foothills of the Sierra Nevada in California, about 17 km west of the town of Angels Camp. This district is part of the West Gold Belt, which lies about 12–16 km west of, and generally parallel to, the better known Mother Lode Gold Belt in central California. The district produced several million dollars worth of Au between about 1890 and 1940.     

Fe-rich tholeiitic liquids and their cumulate products in the Pleasant Bay layered intrusion, coastal Maine

Fe-rich tholeiitic liquids are preserved as chilled pillows and as the chilled base of a 27 meter thick macrorhythmic layer in the Pleasant Bay mafic-silicic layered intrusion. The compositions of olivine (Fo₁) and plagioclase (An₁₃₋₈) in these extremely fine grained rocks suggest that they represent nearly end stage liquids that formed by fractionation of tholeiitic basalt. Their major element compositions (∼17.5 wt% FeO_T and 54 wt%SiO₂) closely resemble highly evolved glasses in the Loch Ba ring dike and some recent estimates of end-stage liquids related to the Skaergaard layered intrusion, and are consistent with recent experimental studies of tholeiite fractionation. Their trace element compositions are consistent with extensive earlier fractionation of plagioclase, olivine, clinopyroxene, ilmenite, magnetite and apatite. The mineral assemblage of the chilled rocks (olivine, clinopyroxene, quartz, ilmenite and magnetite), apatite saturation temperatures, and very low Fe³⁺/Fe²⁺indicate conditions of crystallization at temperatures of about 950 °C and f _{O 2} about two log units below FMQ. Cumulates that lie about 3 meters above the chilled base of the macrorhythmic layer contain cumulus plagioclase, olivine, clinopyroxene, ilmenite, apatite and zircon. This mineral assemblage and the Fe-Mg ratio in clinopyroxene cores suggest that this cumulate was in equilibrium with a liquid having a composition identical to that of the chilled margin which lies directly beneath it. The high FeO_T and low SiO₂ concentrations of this cumulate (23.3 and 45.8 wt%, respectively) are comparable to those in late stage cumulates of the Skaergaard and Kiglapait intrusions. This association of a chilled liquid and cumulate in the Pleasant Bay intrusion suggests that late stage liquids in tholeiitic layered intrusions may have been more SiO₂-rich than field-based models suggest and lends support to recent experimental studies of tholeiite fractionation at low f _O2 which indicate that saturation of an Fe-Ti oxide phase should cause FeO_T to decrease in the remaining liquid. Received: 17 January 1997 / Accepted: 10 June 1997     

Isotope composition of Medieval lead glasses reflecting early silver production in Central Europe

The lead isotope composition of 32 lead glasses excavated from strata of the twelfth to early fifteenth century in six countries of NW Europe made the predominance of the Harz Mountains in this period of the Medieval European lead and silver production highly probable. Post-Variscan vein type galena, Devonian syngenetic hydrothermal ore (Rammelsberg) and blended ore from both deposits in the Harz were used. Our evaluation of 200 mining sites in Germany, Britain and Ireland also demonstrated that minor lead sources for lead glass were located in Bavaria/Bohemia and England. Lead ores from the Rhenohercynian orogenic belt in Germany are derived from rock sources close to the upper continental crust composition in ²³⁸U/²⁰⁴Pb of about 10 and Th/U of about 4. The ores in Central England originated from rocks with ²³⁸U/²⁰⁴Pb of about 11. Received: 24 September 1996 / Accepted: 17 January 1997     

Growth defects in metamorphic biotite

Metamorphic biotites examined by transmission electron microscopy contain planar defects on the (001) plane, superlattices, twins and a microstructure causing streaking of k≠3n rows. Analysis of the fringe contrast shows that the fault vectors associated with the planar defects are either R ₁=±1/3 [010], R ₂=±1/6 [310] or R ₃=±1/6 [3 \(\bar 1\) 0]. Structural considerations indicate that a stacking fault R ₁, R ₂ or R ₃ is most likely to exist in the octahedral layer rather than the potassium layer. The result of such a fault on a unit layer of mica is effectively to rotate it through ±120° about c* (equivalent to the common mica twin law). These stacking faults can provide the mechanism for producing the ±120° rotations associated with the common mica polytypes. Furthermore, many of the observed microstructures can be generated by these stacking faults.     

Granulometric and mineral composition of the loess-paleosol formation in Moldova

The granulometric composition and sorting of loesses and interbedded soils are studied for stratigraphic subdivision and correlation of the loess-paleosol sequence in Moldova. Distinctive features of loess and paleosol horizons of different age are identified and general characteristics of the mineral composition are described that together with other lithological characteristics, including the visual ones, improve reliability of stratigraphic operations.