Late Pleistocene Palaeoclimate Record from Palaeolake Lisan, Israel

Physics

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1699 General Or Miscellaneous, 3344 Paleoclimatology

Scientific paper

Lake Lisan, precursor of the Dead Sea, occupied an elongated narrow depression within the Dead Sea rift valley between 70-15 ka. This region, located at the transition between the Arabian Desert and the Mediterranean climatic zones, is a potential site to study the climatic variations in the Near East (Heim et al. 1997). The Lisan Formation is defined as beginning with the lower member that comprises detrital-aragonite laminae. It is overlain by a middle member that contains abundant sand and clay layers. The upper member mainly comprises aragonite-detrital laminae and is also known as the White Cliff member (Schramm et al. 2000). The results of various studies including chronology, mineralogy, laminae counting and measurement on the polished thin sections of the entire White Cliff member will be presented. The white laminae are composed of authigenic aragonite, possibly the annual summer precipitate of Lake Lisan. The detrital material consists of fine-grained calcite, dolomite, aragonite, quartz, unaltered plagioclase and clays resulting from flood inputs into the lake during winter rains. While occasional euhedral, clear gypsum crystals are present, the bulk of gypsum is of diagenetic origin, occasionally with inclusions of primary detrital sediment. The absence of laminar gypsum is indicative that during this period the density stratification was intact and there was no large scale exchange between the two water masses. The abundance of aragonite is more than twice that of clastics, pointing to a dominance of chemical precipitation and the saline nature of the lake during this period. The deposition of White Cliff Member ceased around 15 ka due to a major drop in lake level that caused widespread deposition of gypsum. The correlation of our data with N. Africa and Asia and its implications for regional precipitation regimes will be presented. References: 1. Schramm, A., Stein, M. and Goldstein, S.L. (2000). Earth and Planetary Science Letters 175, pp: 27-40. 2. Heim, C., Nowaczyk, N.R. and Negendank, J.F.W. (1997). Naturwissenchaften 84, pp: 398-401.

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