The middle pleistocene deposits of Waverley Wood Pit,Warwickshire, England

A complex of channels underlying the Baginton-Lillington Gravel (Baginton Formation) at Waverley Wood Quarry, Warwickshire is described. Fossil pollen and plant macrofossils, Coleoptera, Ostracoda, Mollusca and Mammalia are described from the channel-fill deposits. Consideration of all the evidence allows the identification of four separate stages of channel fill which largely occurred under a cool temperate climate. At the top of Channel 2 evidence for a cold, continental climatic episode can be recognised, suggesting that the whole complex was deposited under a fluctuating climate at the end of a temperate stage. At two levels in the channels human artefacts were recovered confirming the presence of Palaeolithic people in Warwickshire during the deposition of the sediments. Amino-acid geochronology suggests an age within the ‘Cromerian Complex’ Stage for the channels. The small vertebrate and molluscan faunas indicate that the deposits are no older than the latter part of the ‘Cromerian Complex’ Stage of East Anglia. The regional stratigraphic significance of the Waverley Wood succession is outlined.     

Late Holocene relative sea level rise and the Neoglacial history of the Greenland ice sheet

In West Greenland, early and mid Holocene relative sea level (RSL) fall was replaced by late Holocene RSL rise during the Neoglacial, after 4–3 cal. ka BP (thousand calibrated years before present). Here we present the results of an isolation basin RSL study completed near to the coastal town of Sisimiut, in central West Greenland. RSL fell from 14 m above sea level at 5.7 cal. ka BP to reach a lowstand of ?4.0 m at 2.3–1.2 cal. ka BP, before rising by an equivalent amount to present. Differences in the timing and magnitude of the RSL lowstand between this and other sites in West and South Greenland record the varied interplay of local and non‐Greenland RSL processes, notably the reloading of the Earth's crust caused by a Neoglacial expansion of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS) and the subsidence associated with the collapse of the Laurentide Ice Sheet forebulge. This means that the timing of the sea level lowstand cannot be used to infer directly when the GIS advanced during the Neoglacial. The rise in Late Holocene RSL is contrary to recently reported bedrock uplift in the Sisimiut area, based on repeat GPS surveys. This indicates that a belt of peripheral subsidence around the current ice sheet margin was more extensive in the late Holocene, and that there has been a switch from subsidence to uplift at some point in the last thousand years or so. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Biostratigraphic and aminostratigraphic constraints on the age of the Middle Pleistocene glacial succession in north Norfolk,UK

Considerable debate surrounds the age of the Middle Pleistocene glacial succession in East Anglia following some recent stratigraphical reinterpretations. Resolution of the stratigraphy here is important since it not only concerns the glacial history of the region but also has a bearing on our understanding of the earliest human occupation of north‐western Europe. The orthodox consensus that all the tills were emplaced during the Anglian (Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 12) has recently been challenged by a view assigning each major till to a different glacial stage, before, during and after MIS 12. Between Trimingham and Sidestrand on the north Norfolk coast, datable organic sediments occur immediately below and above the glacial succession. The oldest glacial deposit (Happisburgh Till) directly overlies the ‘Sidestrand Unio‐bed’, here defined as the Sidestrand Hall Member of the Cromer Forest‐bed Formation. Dating of these sediments therefore has a bearing on the maximum age of the glacial sequence. This paper reviews the palaeobotany and describes the faunal assemblages recovered from the Sidestrand Unio‐bed, which accumulated in a fluvial environment in a fully temperate climate with regional deciduous woodland. There are indications from the ostracods for weakly brackish conditions. Significant differences are apparent between the Sidestrand assemblages and those from West Runton, the type site of the Cromerian Stage. These differences do not result from contrasting facies or taphonomy but reflect warmer palaeotemperatures at Sidestrand and a much younger age. This conclusion is suggested by the higher proportion of thermophiles at Sidestrand and the occurrence of a water vole with unrooted molars (Arvicola) rather than its ancestor Mimomys savini with rooted molars. Amino acid racemisation data also indicate that Sidestrand is significantly younger than West Runton. These data further highlight the stratigraphical complexity of the ‘Cromerian Complex’ and support the conventional view that the Happisburgh Till was emplaced during the Anglian rather than the recently advanced view that it dates from MIS 16. Moreover, new evidence from the Trimingham lake bed (Sidestrand Cliff Formation) above the youngest glacial outwash sediments (Briton's Lane Formation) indicates that they also accumulated during a Middle Pleistocene interglacial – probably MIS 11. All of this evidence is consistent with a short chronology placing the glacial deposits within MIS 12, rather than invoking multiple episodes of glaciation envisaged in the ‘new glacial stratigraphy’ during MIS 16, 12, 10 and 6. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

River sediments,great floods and centennial‐scale Holocene climate change

A new analysis of all 346 published ¹⁴C dated Holocene alluvial units in Britain offers a unique insight into the regional impacts of global change and shows how surprisingly sensitive British rivers have been to relatively modest but repeated changes in climate. Fourteen major but probably brief periods of flooding are identified bracketed within the periods 400–1070, 1940–3940, 7520–8100 and at ca. 10 420 cal. yr BP. There is a strong correspondence between climatic deteriorations inferred from mire wet shifts and major periods of flooding, especially at ca. 8000 cal. yr BP and since ca. 4000 cal. yr BP. The unusually long and complete British record also demonstrates that alterations in land cover have resulted in a step change in river basin sensitivity to variations in climate. This has very important implications for assessing and mitigating the impact of increasing severe flooding. In small and medium‐sized river basins land use is likely to play a key role in either moderating or amplifying the climatic signal. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Late Quaternary vegetation changes around Lake Rutundu,Mount Kenya,East Africa: evidence from grass cuticles,pollen and stable carbon isotopes

Woody, subalpine shrubs and grasses currently surround Lake Rutundu, Mount Kenya. Multiple proxies, including carbon isotopes, pollen and grass cuticles, from a 755‐cm‐long core were used to reconstruct the vegetation over the past 38 300 calendar years. Stable carbon‐isotope ratios of total organic carbon and terrestrial biomarkers from the lake sediments imply that the proportion of terrestrial plants using the C₄ photosynthetic pathway was greater during the Late Pleistocene than in the Holocene. Pollen data show that grasses were a major constituent of the vegetation throughout the Late Pleistocene and Holocene. The proportion of grass pollen relative to the pollen from other plants was greatest at the last glacial maximum (LGM). Grass cuticles confirm evidence that C₄ grass taxa were present at the LGM and that the majority followed the cold‐tolerant NADP‐MEC₄ subpathway. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

VLA and MERLIN observations of RZ Cassiopeiae

We present radio interferometric observations of the Algol-type binary system RZ Cassiopeiae made with the VLA and MERLIN arrays at 6 cm over an incomplete orbital cycle of the system (1.195 d). We detected RZ Cas with both instruments. The images were unresolved in both cases, with angular extents comparable to the synthesized beams. The peak flux density in the VLA image was 1.14 mJy beam⁻¹ and in the MERLIN image it was 0.93 mJy beam⁻¹. The derived brightness temperatures are  4.02 × 10⁸  and  4.35 × 10⁸ K  and the effective electron energies are 0.347 and 0.346 MeV for the MERLIN and VLA data respectively. The radio light curve shows an interesting modulation centred close to the primary eclipse which seems to correlate with ASCA SIS observations of the system. The results can be interpreted as an emitting region on the outer hemisphere of the cool component aligned along the centroid axis of the binary system.