Geological and Hydrodynamical Examination of the Bathyal Tsunamigenic Origin of Miocene Conglomerates in Chita Peninsula, Central Japan

A conglomerate appears on a rocky coast called ??Tsubutega-ura Coast??, located on the southwestern coast near the southern tip of the Chita Peninsula, Aichi Prefecture, central Japan. The conglomerate belongs to Miocene sedimentary rocks termed the Morozaki Group. The conglomerate includes meter-scale boulders, indicating that it was formed by an extraordinary event. In the geological investigation, we observed that the conglomerate shows alternate changes of paleocurrent directions between seaward and landward. This feature is supposed to be formed by tsunami currents. In the hydrodynamical investigation, we obtained following results: (1) the lowest limit of a current velocity to move a boulder of about 3?m in diameter would be about 2?C3?m/s, (2) the speed of tsunami currents reproduced by tsunami simulation exceeds 3?m/s at 300?m in depth when the tsunami is generated by a gigantic earthquake with magnitude 9.0 or more, (3) the transport distance of the boulder would be several hundred?meters to several kilometers by one tsunami event caused by a gigantic earthquake. We conclude that tsunamis best explain the formation of the conglomerate deposited in upper bathyal environments about 200?C400?m depth, both from geological and hydrodynamical viewpoints.