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Changed Late Quaternary Marine Environments on Atlantic Continental Shelf and Upper Slope1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

K.O. Emery ,
A.S. Merrill  and
E.R.M. Druffel
K.O. Emery
Affiliation:
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Massachusetts 02543, USA
A.S. Merrill
Affiliation:
Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts USA
E.R.M. Druffel
Affiliation:
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Massachusetts 02543, USA
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Abstract

About 2000 large sediment samples were collected during the early 1960s throughout the continental shelf off the Atlantic coast of the United States to establish and map sediment types including sediments relict from times of glacially low (and subsequently higher) sea levels. In about 510 of these samples we found fossil shells of mollusks remaining from environmental conditions different from those at present. Publications and collections by others contain about 70 additional samples having relict mollusks. Some of these shells indicate lower sea levels, others colder water, and still others warmer water than is now present. Radiocarbon measurements from earlier studies by us and others established the dates of colder water (late Pleistocene), and we made additional measurements to learn the dates of warmer water (about 1000 to 2000 yr B.P.). The results show reasonably enough that continental shelves are the sites of relict faunas as well as of sediments that indicate changed and complex environmental histories.

Type
Research Article
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , November 1988 , pp. 251 - 269
Copyright
University of Washington

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Footnotes

1

Contribution No. 6818 of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

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