The Raised Beaches, and 'Head' or Rubble-drift, of the South of England: their Relation to the Valley Drifts and to the Glacial Period; and on a late post-Glacial Submergence

1892 ◽  
Vol 48 (1-4) ◽  
pp. 263-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Prestwich
1895 ◽  
Vol 2 (9) ◽  
pp. 405-408
Author(s):  
A. R. Hunt

In Professor Prestwich's important paper on the Raised Beaches of the South of England the following passage occurs: “In Torbay there are small portions of a Raised Beach near Paignton…” As on the strength of this statement the line of Raised Beaches is carried in the map round the extreme present limits of Torbay, and the hitherto universally accepted doctrine, that Raised Beaches do not occur in the softer parts of the coast-line, is thus controverted, the assertion is one of considerable importance.


1956 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
Henri Breuil

During the years between 1932–40 I went many times to Carnac (Morbihan) to visit megaliths in that neighbourhood and copy the decorations on them. I was astonished to note, amongst the chipped stone tools in the museum there, a very small yellowish flint bifaced implement picked up by Zachary Le Rouzic on the island of Téviec, noted for the excavations and magnificent Mesolithic discoveries of M. and Mme. St.-Just Péquart. This, of course, was not a tool from their Mesolithic site, but was a stray find from the island, where it was found by Le Rouzic in the gravelly section near the neck of land joining the Quiberon peninsula. Téviec consists of two islands divided by a narrow channel of sea. The section is opposite to the mainland, on the bigger island forming the edge of this channel. It shows threé beds of sea-worn pebbles of medium and small size; the upper two beds are separated by red sand. In the uppermost bed, the pebbles have taken a vertical position, similar to those in the upper part (the so-called head) of the lower raised beaches of the English Channel. This phenomenon is due to the cryoturbation during a glacial period. The upper bed is pre-Würmian, though not necessarily very much so, for it suffered through cryoturbation during the Würmian stage. The angles of the stone implement are sharp, i.e. it had not been rolled—and it came therefore from the red sandy bed, that is from a late stage in the Riss-Würm, when the sea slightly retreated between two periods of slight rises in sea-level. This implement thus has some importance owing to its geological position. I visited the site with Zachary Le Rouzic on the ioth October, 1936, but I found no sign of worked stone tools in any of these levels, which are very slightly above the modern sea-level.


In a paper read before the Geological Society early this year, I gave the evidence—the result of personal observation—which led me to conclude that the South of England had been submerged to the depth of not less than about 1000 feet between the Glacial (or Post-glacial) and the recent or Neolithic periods. That evidence was based upon the characters, physical and palæontological, of a peculiar superficial drift, for which I proposed the term of "Rubble-drift,” to distinguish it from the valley, marine, and glacial drifts of the same districts. Under this term I include various detrital deposits to which different designations have been attached. Amongst the more important of these are the drift called “head” over the Raised Beaches of the Channel and the Ossiferous Fissures of South Devon. Various explanations have been suggested to account for the “head,” such as, 1st, an excessive rainfall, accompanied by great cold; 2nd, the sliding of masses of snow and ice over slopes; 3rd, waves of translation; 4th, torrential fluviatile action during a period of great cold. I have stated in the paper referred to the objections to these several explanations. Some of them, no doubt, would suffice to produce a portion of the observed effects, but they fail to embrace the whole, and they all involve consequences which are incompatible with the general facts. They all, also, with one exception, depend on subaërial agencies, to which there is the general objection that these agencies involve a certain amount of friction and weathering which are conspicuously wanting—or, if present, it is in a very slight degree—in the deposits under review. There is the further objection that some of the phenomena indicate the exercise of a propelling force for which the suggested causes are manifestly inadequate. There are other points, apparently inconsistent with such agencies, connected more especially with the Ossiferous fissures and the Loess of the continental area, which will be considered more fully in the following pages.


2010 ◽  
Vol 29 (15-16) ◽  
pp. 1880-1893 ◽  
Author(s):  
P.T. Fretwell ◽  
D.A. Hodgson ◽  
E.P. Watcham ◽  
M.J. Bentley ◽  
S.J. Roberts

1866 ◽  
Vol 3 (26) ◽  
pp. 348-354 ◽  
Author(s):  
Searles V. Wood

In a paper in this Magazine, upon the structure of the Thames Valley, I endeavoured to show that instead of being, as had been asserted, a valley of similar structure to those of the Somme and Seine, and containing deposits of nearly similar order and age, the valley in which the Thames gravel was deposited possessed no outlet to what is now the North Sea, being divided from it by a range of high gravelless country; and that, in lieu of such an outlet, the valley opened, in more than one part, over what is now the bare Chalk country forming the northern boundary of the Valley of the Weald. I also endeavoured to show that all the deposits of the Thames Valley, except the peat and marsh clay, belonged to several successive stages, marking the gradual denudation of the Boulderclay, the lower Bagshot, the London Clay, and the subjacent Tertiaries, which had, at the end of the Glacial period, spread over the south-east of England in a complete order of succession: the sea into which this valley discharged occupying, what is now, the Chalk country of the Counties of Kent, Surrey, Sussex, and Hampshire, inclusive of the interval subsequently scooped out to form the Valley of the Weald: so that, not only was the latter valley newer than that of the Thames, and of the most recent of the Thames Valley deposits, except the peat and marsh clay, but that these deposits in themselves marked a long descent in time from that comparatively remote period of the Boulder-clay.


2018 ◽  
Vol 89 (3) ◽  
pp. 797-819 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel R. Muhs ◽  
Jeffrey S. Pigati ◽  
James R. Budahn ◽  
Gary L. Skipp ◽  
E. Arthur Bettis ◽  
...  

AbstractLoess is widespread over Alaska, and its accumulation has traditionally been associated with glacial periods. Surprisingly, loess deposits securely dated to the last glacial period are rare in Alaska, and paleowind reconstructions for this time period are limited to inferences from dune orientations. We report a rare occurrence of loess deposits dating to the last glacial period, ~19 ka to ~12 ka, in the Yukon-Tanana Upland. Loess in this area is very coarse grained (abundant coarse silt), with decreases in particle size moving south of the Yukon River, implying that the drainage basin of this river was the main source. Geochemical data show, however, that the Tanana River valley to the south is also a likely distal source. The occurrence of last-glacial loess with sources to both the south and north is explained by both regional, synoptic-scale winds from the northeast and opposing katabatic winds that could have developed from expanded glaciers in both the Brooks Range to the north and the Alaska Range to the south. Based on a comparison with recent climate modeling for the last glacial period, seasonality of dust transport may also have played a role in bringing about contributions from both northern and southern sources.


2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (17) ◽  
pp. 9058-9066 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gang Li ◽  
Harunur Rashid ◽  
Lifeng Zhong ◽  
Xing Xu ◽  
Wen Yan ◽  
...  

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