The Matuyama/Brunhes boundary in loess sections in the south of the East European Plain and their correlation on the basis of palaeomagnetic and palaeopedologic data

• Published in: Quaternary international 2009-05, Vol.201 (1), p.60-66
• Main Authors: Faustov, Stanislav S., Virina, Elena I., Tsatskin, Alexander, Gendler, Tatyana S., Heller, Friedrich
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Freshwater
• ISSN: 1040-6182; 1873-4553
• DOI: 10.1016/j.quaint.2008.06.014

The Matuyama/Brunhes boundary (MBB) in loess sections of the East European Plain, one of the greatest areas of global loess distribution, is a highly debatable issue. The ambiguity of the MBB position here results from the complexity of loess/soil magnetization processes and an apparent delay in loess remanence acquisition, and from the uncertainties of pedostratigraphic interpretations. In the Don Glaciation area, the MBB is unanimously placed below the Don moraine, although the exact position is still controversial. In the sites of the Northern Azov Sea, the MBB is, however, placed in the loess horizon considered to be the equivalent of the Don moraine in the north. The inconsistency of this interpretation is demonstrated by detailed magnetostratigraphic and pedostratigraphic studies in the western sites of Zaporozh'e (Dnieper basin), Novaya Etuliya (Lower Danube basin) and Roxolany (Lower Dniester basin). In all these sites, albeit with certain minor discrepancies, the MBB is found two or three interglacial palaeosols below the Don loess, which is overlain by the good stratigraphic marker of the Vorona pedocomplex, a thick polygenetic red-brown palaeosol formed supposedly in a Mediterranean climate. Here the MBB is placed in a ‘quadruple soil’ unit, termed “Roxolany loess/soil suite”, which consists of four closely spaced, strongly calcareous soils occupying an interval between the Don loess on top and the earlier well-developed Bobrov (?) loess with reversed Matuyama magnetization. The Roxolany suite can possibly be correlated with the three palaeosols of the pre-Don Ilyinka unit of the Russian Unified Stratigraphic Scheme and thus confirms the interpretation of the MBB in the central areas of the East European Plain as to the interval between the Ternovka (second-pre-Don) palaeosol and the Troitsk (third pre-Don) palaeosol.