Abstract The Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum (PETM) was the most extreme example of an abrupt global warming event in the Cenozoic, and it is widely discussed as a past analog for contemporary climate change. Anomalous accumulation of terrigenous mud in marginal shelf environments and concentration of sand in terrestrial deposits during the PETM have both been inferred to represent an increase in fluvial sediment flux. A corresponding increase in water discharge or river slope would have been required to transport this additional sediment. However, in many locations, evidence for changes in fluvial slope is weak, and geochemical proxies and climate models indicate that while runoff variability may have increased, mean annual precipitation was unaffected or potentially decreased. Here, we explored whether changes in river morphodynamics under variable-discharge conditions could have contributed to increased fluvial sand concentration during the PETM. Using field observations, we reconstructed channel paleohydraulics, mobility, and avulsion behavior for the Wasatch Formation (Piceance Basin, Colorado, USA). Our data provide no evidence for changes in fluvial slope during the PETM, and thus no evidence for enhanced sediment discharge. However, our data do show evidence of increased fluvial bar reworking and advection of sediment to floodplains during channel avulsion, consistent with experimental studies of alluvial systems subjected to variable discharge. High discharge variability increases channel mobility and floodplain reworking, which retains coarse sediment while remobilizing and exporting fine sediment through the alluvial system. This mechanism can explain anomalous fine sediment accumulation on continental shelves without invoking sustained increases in fluvial sediment and water discharge.
Abstract: New and compiled U-Pb detrital zircon ages (n = 495) and sandstone petrographic compositions (n = 45) indicate a largely similar provenance throughout deposition of the Paleocene and lowermost Eocene Wasatch Formation in the Piceance Creek basin of northwest Colorado, U.S.A. Age spectra are dominated by Cretaceous- and Precambrian-age zircons from fluvial sand bodies composed of compositional litharenites and feldspathic litharenites. Our comparison with age spectra from other geologic formations exposed in surrounding Laramide uplifts indicates the Wasatch Formation is most similar to Upper Cretaceous fluvio-deltaic and marine strata of the Mesaverde Group, Mancos Shale, and their equivalents. Age spectra and paleodrainage directions from the lower Paleogene Wasatch and underlying Ohio Creek formations suggests recycling of these strata off the Sawatch and Uncompahgre uplifts from south and southeast of the basin. The data are inconsistent with previous hypotheses that Yavapai–Mazatzal crystalline basement in the Sawatch Range and Mesozoic eolianites in the Uncompahgre uplift contributed significant sediment to the basin. Based on these provenance insights and estimates of maximum depositional ages from detrital-zircon ages and biostratigraphy it appears that exposure and erosion of sedimentary strata of the Sawatch Range began between 65 and 60 Ma. This timing is significantly younger than the previously hypothesized ∼ 72 Ma unroofing of the crystalline basement in the uplift. Furthermore, we find no provenance evidence that sediment was transported across the Douglas Creek arch into the Piceance Creek basin from the Uinta basin. Thus, we infer this subdued Laramide structure was sufficient to block sediment dispersal from the paleo–California River system, which contemporaneously deposited ∼ 3000 km 3 of sediment, transported from the magmatic arc, in the Uinta basin.
Abstract We use physical experiments to investigate the response of submarine braided channels driven by saline density currents to increasing inflow discharge and bed slope. We find that, similarly to braided rivers, only a fraction of submarine braided networks have active sediment transport. We then find similar response to imposed change between submarine and fluvial braided systems: (1) both the active and total braiding intensities increase with increasing discharge and slope; (2) the ratio of active braiding intensity to total braiding intensity is 0.5 in submarine braided systems regardless of discharge and slope; and (3) the active braiding intensity scales linearly with dimensionless stream power. Thus, braided submarine channels and braided rivers are similar in some important aspects of their behavior and responses to changes in stream power and bed slope. In light of the scale independence of braided channel planform organization, these results are likely to apply beyond experimental scales.
Abstract Submarine channels convey turbidity currents, the primary means for distributing sand and coarser sediments to the deep ocean. In some cases, submarine channels have been shown to braid, in a similar way to rivers. Yet the strength of the analogy between the subaerial and submarine braided channels is incompletely understood. Six experiments with subaqueous density currents and two experiments with subaerial rivers were conducted to quantify: (i) submarine channel kinematics; and (ii) the responses of channel and bar geometry to subaerial versus submarine basin conditions, inlet conditions and the ratio of ‘flow to sediment’ discharge ( Q w / Q s ). For a range of Q w / Q s values spanning a factor of 2·7, subaqueous braided channels consistently developed, were deeper upstream compared to downstream, and alternated with zones of sheet flow downstream. Topographic analyses included spatial statistics and mapping bars and channels using a reduced‐complexity flow model. The ratio of the estimated depth‐slope product for the submarine channels versus the subaerial channels was greater than unity, consistent with theoretical predictions, but with downstream variations ranging over a factor of 10. For the same inlet geometry and Q w / Q s , a subaqueous experiment produced deeper, steeper channels with fewer channel threads than its subaerial counterpart. For the subaqueous cases, neither slope, nor braiding index, nor bar aspect ratio varied consistently with Q w / Q s . For the subaqueous channels, the timescale for avulsion was double the time to migrate one channel width, and one‐third the time to aggrade one channel depth. The experiments inform a new stratigraphic model for submarine braided channels, wherein sand bodies are more laterally connected and less vertically persistent than those formed by submarine meandering channels.
The “Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum” (PETM), is understood to be an extreme and short-lived (ca.150- 220kya) global warming event that occurred 55.8 million years ago and during which global annual temperatures are estimated to have increased by ca. 5-8◦C, with respect to sea surface temperatures and ca. 4-5◦C, with respect to the deep sea. A remaining outstanding question is: in addition to the global increase in temperature, how was precipitation perturbed during the event, and how did fluvial surface processes respond to the perturbation? In the southern Spanish Pyrenees, the Paleocene succession of the Tremp-Graus Basin is made up of the Talarn (Danian) and Esplugafreda (Thanetian) red bed formations. The Esplugafreda section is composed of approximately 250m of reddish paleosols and contains numerous lenticular bodies of calcareous conglomerates, which are interpreted as braided channels. The Esplugafreda Formation is overlain by the Claret Conglomerate— an extensive sheet-like unit which ranges in thickness between 1m and 4m of clast-supported calcareous conglomerate and pebbly calcarenites and is interpreted as marking the fluvial response to a dramatic climate change, in the form of the transformation of a braided river and floodplain system into an enormous conglomeratic braided plain (formed over at least 2000km2 conservatively) due to dramatic change in the hydrologic cycle. The conglomerate unit ends abruptly and is overlaid by fine-grained yellowish soils which are mainly made up of silty mudstones with abundant small size carbonate nodules suggesting another shift in the hydrological cycle after the PETM. Here we present paleo-channel geometry and grain size data collected in the southern Pyrenees (Tremp, Aren, and Serraduy sections) that we invert to reconstruct paleoflow conditions during the Paleocene and during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Event. We confront paleohydraulic results with sea level, isotope and litholog- ical records in order to understand river response to the PETM climate change and try to assess the possible precipitation perturbations at the PETM in the study area and how these are transferred into the sedimentary record.
The “Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum” (PETM), is understood to be an extreme global warming event that occurred about 56 million years ago and during which, global annual temperatures are estimated to have increased by 5- 8°C. An outstanding question is: in addition to the global increase in temperature, how has precipitation been perturbed during the event, and how have surface processes responded? In the southern Spanish Pyrenees, the Paleocene succession of the Tremp- Graus basin is made up of the Talarn (Danian) and Esplugafreda (Thanetian) red bed formations. The Esplugafreda section is composed of approximately 250m of reddish paleosols and contains numerous channel-like bodies of calcareous conglomerates, which are interpreted as braided channels. The Esplugafreda formation is overlain by the Claret Conglomerate—an extensive sheet-like unit which ranges in thickness between 1m and 4m of clast-supported calcareous conglomerate and pebbly calcarenites and is interpreted mark the beginning of the Eocene. The Claret conglomerate is thus proposed to be a witness of river response to a dramatic climate change, in the form of the transformation of a braided river and floodplain system into an enormous conglomeratic braided plain (formed over at least 2000km2 conservatively) indicating dramatic change in the hydrologic cycle. The conglomerate unit ends abruptly and is overlaid by fine-grained yellowish soil which mainly made up of silty mudstones with abundant small size carbonate nodules suggesting another shift in the hydrological cycle after the PETM. Here we first present channel width/depth and grain size data collected in the southern Pyrenees (Tremp, Aren, and Serraduy sectors) in order to document river response during the climate change assumed to have occurred during the PETM. Secondly, we present preliminary results of experiments investigating river response to water discharge and sediment supply variations in a flume tank at the Surface Dynamics Laboratory of the University of Geneva. Our principal objective is to discuss the possible precipitation perturbations at the PETM and how these are transferred into the rock record of river response.
Two new insect-related ichnogenera are reported in fossil dinosaur bones from Upper Cretaceous continental strata in Madagascar and Utah. Cubiculum ornatus n. igen. and isp. is described from numerous fossil bones in the Upper Cretaceous Maevarano Formation of northwestern Madagascar, and consists of hollow, ovoid chambers with concave flanks excavated into both spongy and compact bone. Traces similar in morphology to Cubiculum ornatus have been reported elsewhere in North America, Asia, Europe, and Africa in bones ranging in age from Jurassic to Pleistocene, and have been interpreted as pupal chambers constructed by carrion beetle larvae. Osteocallis mandibulus n. igen. and isp. is described in dinosaur bones from continental deposits of the Upper Cretaceous Maevarano Formation of Madagascar and the Upper Cretaceous Kaiparowits Formation of southern Utah. O. mandibulus consists of shallow, meandering surface trails, composed of numerous arcuate grooves, bored into compact (cortical) bone surfaces, and is tentatively interpreted as a feeding trace. Based on similar patterns of bioglyph preserved in both Cubiculum ornatus and Osteocallis mandibulus, the tracemaker is interpreted to be the same or similar for both borings. Given the recurrent association with animal remains, the tracemaker is furthermore presumed to be a necrophagous or osteophagous insect that used bone as a substrate for both reproduction (C. ornatus) and feeding (O. mandibulus).
