AbstractAminostratigraphic correlations of emergent Quaternary deposits along the U.S. Atlantic Coastal Plain have employed independent radiometric data, regional temperature history models, and assumptions regarding the nature of the preserved late Quaternary sea-level record on this passive margin. A substantial “aminostratigraphic offset” is required if regional aminozones are rigorously constrained by all available Th/U data. New insights regarding the relation of this offset to subsurface stratigraphy in the Cape Fear region of southeastern North Carolina can explain these conflicts as consequences of the highly incomplete post-Cretaceous depositional record of the region. Southward projection of theoretical aminostratigraphic correlation trends suggests that stage 5 correlative marine units are rarely preserved on the emergent portion of the Coastal Plain between Cape Lookout and central South Carolina and that samples of this age would be most frequently found in this region only as fragmentary (and/or reworked) deposits on the inner shelf or in the subsurface of modern barrier islands. If this hypothesis is correct, then the accuracy of several Th/U coral dates from the South Carolina Coastal Plain must be questioned, along with sea-level, tectonic, and paleoclimatic conclusions derived from these dates.
Palynomorph census data from Pliocene strata of the U.S. Atlantic Coastal Plain (Massachusetts to central Florida)
