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Problems of Interpreting Radiocarbon Dates from Dead-Ice Terrain, with an Example from the Puget Lowland of Washington

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Stephen C. Porter
Affiliation:
Department of Geological Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington USA
Robert J. Carson III
Affiliation:
Department of Geosciences, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina USA

Abstract

Radiocarbon dates of organic matter collected from ablation till or from the base of peat bogs in dead-ice deposits may postdate retreat of an active glacier terminus by hundreds or even thousands of years, and therefore provide only minimum estimates for the time of glacial maximum and the beginning of ice recession. Logs incorporated in Vashon till close to the drift border postdate recession of the Puget Lobe of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet by some 1400 years, and probably were buried when drift-mantled stagnant ice melted away, causing collapse of a superglacial forest.

Type
Original Articles
Copyright
University of Washington

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