Deposits of a transgressive-phase Lake Bonneville stillstand or oscillation are found just below the elevation of the regressive-phase Provo shoreline at numerous exposures throughout the Bonneville basin. Existence of these subProvo shoreline deposits provides a new explanation for the massive size of Provo depositional and erosional landforms, which can no longer be explained by a long stillstand at the Provo shoreline. Provo coastal landforms are large because they are superimposed on subProvo landforms. Results also help to clarify divergent interpretations regarding the relative age of the Provo shoreline and the number of times it was occupied by the water plane. Occupation of approximately the same level during both the transgressive and the regressive phase of Lake Bonneville may be coincidental, or it may indicate that a bedrock sill controlled outflow at subProvo as well as Provo time. Rise to the Bonneville level could have occurred after massive slope failure plugged the outlet pass.

Lake Bonneville was a climatically sensitive, closed-basin lake that occupied the eastern Great Basin during the late Pleistocene. Ongoing efforts to refine the record of lake level history are important for deciphering climate conditions in the Bonneville basin and for facilitating correlations with regional and global records of climate change. Radiocarbon data from this and other studies suggest that the lake oscillated at or near the Provo level much longer than depicted by current models of lake level change. Radiocarbon data also suggest that the lake dropped from threshold control much more rapidly than previously supposed. These revisions to the Lake Bonneville hydrograph, coupled with independent evidence of climate change from vegetation and glacial records, have important implications for conditions in the Bonneville basin and during the Pleistocene to Holocene transition.