A wetland oasis at Wadi Gharandal spanning 125–70 ka on the human migration trail in southern Jordan

Al-Saqarat, Bety S.; Abbas, Mahmoud; Lai, Zhongping; Gong, Shengkai; Alkuisi, Mustafa M.; Hamad, Abdalla M.B. Abu; Carling, Paul A.; Jansen, John D.

doi:10.1017/qua.2020.82

Cited by 11 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 79 publications

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“…The accumulation of reworked, secondary fluvial loess continued at Jurf ed Darawish until at least 30 ka before erosion started to prevail sometime afterwards. The new data from Jurf ed Darawish and published information from other locations in the southern Levant show that streams and in-stream and spring-fed wetlands occurred on the Jordanian Plateau, in Wadi Arava/Araba and in the Negev in the Late Pleistocene (Schwarcz et al, 1979;Waldmann et al, 2010;Winer, 2010;Al-Saqarat et al, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 85%

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A Late Pleistocene Wetland Setting in the Arid Jurf ed Darawish Region in Central Jordan

Mischke¹,

Lai²,

Faershtein³

et al. 2021

Front. Earth Sci.

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Current conditions in the southern Levant are hyperarid, and local communities rely on fossil subsurface water resources. The timing of more favourable wetter periods and also their spatial characteristics are not yet well constrained. To improve our understanding of past climate and environmental conditions in the deserts of the southern Levant, sedimentary sections including artefact-bearing beds from Jurf ed Darawish on the Central Jordanian Plateau were investigated using sedimentological and micropalaeontological analyses and OSL dating. Grain-size analysis and structures of the clayey-silty sediments show that they mainly represent reworked loess deposits. The OSL ages suggest that these fine-grained sediments were accumulated during Marine Isotope Stages (MIS) 5-3. Recorded ostracod valves (mostly Potamocypris, Ilyocypris and Pseudocandona), remains of aquatic and terrestrial gastropod shells, and charophyte gyrogonites and stem encrustations indicate that an in-stream wetland existed at the location of Jurf ed Darawish during MIS 5-4 which was replaced by a vegetated alluvial plain in MIS 3. The prevailing aggradational setting was replaced by an erosional setting sometime after 30 ka. Abundant artefacts, distributed over a vertical range of up to 40 cm in a bed covered by a sedimentary sequence of 12-m thickness, provide evidence for the presence of humans in the region during a relatively long period from ca. 85 to 65 ka. The reconstruction of an in-stream wetland at Jurf ed Darawish, and the presence of humans at the site and in other desert regions of the Jordanian Plateau, the Wadi Arava/Araba, and the Negev and the Nefud deserts, show that the regional climate in the late MIS 5 and MIS 4 was significantly wetter than today and provided favourable conditions for humans in the Southern Levant and the northwestern Arabian Peninsula.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 85%

“…90 km southwest of Jurf ed Darawish, were regarded as formed in the Pleistocene Lake Lisan by Bender (1968). The recent reassessment by Al-Saqarat et al (2021) revealed that the sediments represent a wetland sequence accumulated in the wadi between ca. 125-70 ka.…”

Section: Comparison With Other Pleistocene Records In the Regionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Late Pleistocene Wetland Setting in the Arid Jurf ed Darawish Region in Central Jordan

Mischke¹,

Lai²,

Faershtein³

et al. 2021

Front. Earth Sci.

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“…This might be the result of difficulties in stratigraphic correlations between the two cores and/or lateral variation of depositional environments. However, this discrepancy can also depend on intrinsic problems with radiocarbon dating of organic-rich sediments (Lai et al, 2014;Al-Saqarat et al, 2021) in a playa or playa lake environment, where carbonates are constantly forming and dissolving following complex biogeochemical patterns and pH changes.…”

Section: Age Of the Sediments At The Kubu Sitementioning

confidence: 99%

Late Pleistocene–Holocene Palaeoenvironmental Evolution of the Makgadikgadi Basin, Central Kalahari, Botswana: New Evidence From Shallow Sediments and Ostracod Fauna

et al. 2022

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The Makgadikgadi Basin in Botswana hosts a system of salt lakes, which developed from the Upper Pleistocene onward due to the gradual shrinking of the giant Lake Palaeo-Makgadikgadi. Stratigraphic and palaeoclimatic studies of this area are difficult due to the influence of several factors, such as a complex history of regional tectonic activities, as well as climatic changes coupled with dryland diagenetic processes. This lake, in the central Kalahari, is the key to understanding the climatic variability in the southern part of Africa in the Quaternary and has played an important role in the evolution of numerous taxa, including our own. In this study, detailed sedimentological analyses (grain size and major elements distribution) of shallow sediments from the Makgadikgadi Pans were combined with the first comprehensive study of the encountered ostracod fauna to establish trends in the environmental changes in the area from the late Quaternary. Ostracod fossil assemblages from the cores of the Makgadikgadi Pans are dominated by the Limnocythere ssp., an opportunistic taxa commonly colonizing the littoral areas of shallow evaporative, ephemeral lakes, together with the subordinate occurrences of Sarcypridopsis ochracea, Sclerocypris cf. bicornis, Candonopsis spp., and Ilyocypris spp. The sediments from the pans show fluctuations in the Cl/K and Ca/Cl ratios, often in phase with the relative abundance of Limnocythere suggesting a cyclicity induced by changes of salinity and alkalinity in the water. This multi-proxy study of the cores collected from the pans suggests a Late Pleistocene shallow, playa lake environment with strongly alkaline water, interrupted by a prolonged drought with sustained aeolian conditions between ∼16 and 2 ka BP. Increasing diversity of ostracod fauna in the top 20–30 cm of the cores indicates that a temporary shift toward higher humidity occurred around 2–1.5 ka BP and lasted through the Medieval Warm Period. This humid period was followed by an overall desiccation trend that started with the Little Ice Age and continues until the present day.

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“…The radiocarbon dating method is regarded as a reliable dating method with an age limit, theoretically, up to approximately 55,000 years (Hajdas et al, 2021). However, a growing number of geochronologic studies corroborated that the reliability of radiocarbon dating for late Pleistocene sediments is problematic due to the age limit cluster around 35-40 ka BP (Yim et al, 1990;Pigati et al, 2007;Yi et al, 2013;Wang et al, 2018a;Miller and Andrews, 2019;Agatova et al, 2020;Al-Saqarat et al, 2021), or approximately 25 ka BP in practice Wang et al, 2014;Song et al, 2015;Li et al, 2020c;Cheng et al, 2022;Long et al, 2022). The optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating method has become widely accepted in recent decades, with its merits of a long time-scale range (even up to 200 ka) and abundance of dating materials (e.g., quartz or feldspar) (Murray and Olley, 2002;Rhodes, 2011;Murray et al, 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Radiocarbon and OSL dating on cores from the Chaoshan delta in the coastal South China Sea

et al. 2022

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Accurate chronology plays a crucial role in reconstructing delta evolution. Radiocarbon (14C) and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating are widely used to establish a stratigraphic chronology of the late Quaternary sediments. The Chaoshan plain is located on the southern coast of China and borders the South China Sea. The thickness of Quaternary sediments in this area extends to a depth of 140 m and is considered a valuable archive for studying the evolution of the delta in response to climate and sea-level changes. However, reliable chronological data are still very limited. In this paper, eighteen accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) 14C and thirteen quartz OSL ages were obtained from two cores from the Rongjiang plain, the middle part of the Chaoshan plain: ZK001 (90.85 m in depth) and ZK002 (100 m in depth). The present study aims to provide a reliable chronology of the Chaoshan plain based on OSL and 14C dating methods and examine the upper limit of the 14C dating on plant remains. Our results show that (1) OSL ages of cores ZK001 and ZK002 range from 56 to 1.7 ka and from 177 to 15 ka, respectively; (2) 14C ages of core ZK002 range from 8.8 to 41 cal ka BP, showing that all 14C ages below ca. 30 m depth are younger than OSL ages and that the upper limit of plant remains is around 35 cal ka BP. OSL ages are consistent with stratigraphic order within uncertainties. The oldest OSL age obtained from core ZK002 is 177 ± 20 ka at a depth of 93 m, and is considered a minimum age. This indicates that the Quaternary deposition in the Rongjiang plain can trace back to at least the marine isotope stage (MIS) 6 during sea-level lowstand, during which the plain is mainly influenced by the fluvial process. The comparison between 14C and OSL ages in the Chaoshan plain suggests that 14C ages older than 35 cal ka BP need to be re-evaluated. However, the OSL dating method proves reliable for establishing a comprehensive chronological framework for the late Quaternary sediments in this area.

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A wetland oasis at Wadi Gharandal spanning 125–70 ka on the human migration trail in southern Jordan

Cited by 11 publications

References 79 publications

A Late Pleistocene Wetland Setting in the Arid Jurf ed Darawish Region in Central Jordan

A Late Pleistocene Wetland Setting in the Arid Jurf ed Darawish Region in Central Jordan

Late Pleistocene–Holocene Palaeoenvironmental Evolution of the Makgadikgadi Basin, Central Kalahari, Botswana: New Evidence From Shallow Sediments and Ostracod Fauna

Radiocarbon and OSL dating on cores from the Chaoshan delta in the coastal South China Sea

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