Abstract
DURING the last glaciation, world sea-level is generally thought to have been about 330 ft. (100 m.) below that of to-day. The rate of recovery for the last 200 ft. has been obtained from the (radiocarbon) age of peat beds and beach deposits which were covered successively by the rising sea1. Search for material to date the preceding 130 ft. could be made, quite reasonably, in a region of tectonic stability such as south-west England. The existing estuaries are too shallow to carry suitable material, but there are good prospects in the ground between the south coast of Ireland and the north coast of Cornwall. Here there is a hollow, the floor of which is 420 ft. below present sea-level, cut off from water of comparable depth, some 20 miles distant, by a sill the greatest depth of which is 330 ft. below present sea-level. Mitchell2 considers that this sill and two others at a higher level in the Irish Sea are moraines, and this is supported by what is known of the composition of the sea-floor. Material from mud to stones is common. Pleistocene erratics certainly occur on the floor of the Irish Sea3,4, and the height of the middle sill is far less than the thickness of the uncompacted materials, revealed by a seismic refraction station nearby5.
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References
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STRIDE, A., BOWERS, R. Two Unexplored Records of Quaternary History. Nature 191, 1001 (1961). https://doi.org/10.1038/1911001a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1911001a0
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