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Pleistocene collapse of the west antarctic ice sheet
1R. P. Scherer and A. Aldahan, Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University, Villavagen 16, S-752 36 Uppsala, Sweden. S. Tulaczyk, H. Engelhardt, B. Kamb, Department of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology,
Abstract:
Some glacial sediment samples recovered from beneath the West Antarctic ice sheet at ice stream B contain Quaternary diatoms and up to 10(8) atoms of beryllium-10 per gram. Other samples contain no Quaternary diatoms and only background levels of beryllium-10 (less than 10(6) atoms per gram). The occurrence of young diatoms and high concentrations of beryllium-10 beneath grounded ice indicates that the Ross Embayment was an open marine environment after a late Pleistocene collapse of the marine ice sheet.