The maximum warmings of the Pleistocene world climate recorded in the Canary Islands

Abstract

Evidence of the warmest Pleistocene climatic changes is preserved in the eastern Canary Islands. Although the existence of raised fossiliferous marine deposits in northern Gran Canaria has been known since the 19th century, their chronology and significance with regard to past sea levels and temperatures have remained uncertain. Here, we show three marine transgressions recorded by raised marine deposits. The highest (85 m above sea level (masl)) and oldest marine deposit is interbedded in basaltic lava flows and has been dated using both palaeomagnetic and radiometric methods. The age of these deposits, located on the northwest coast of Gran Canaria, near the town of Agaete, places the marine transgression in a first Pleistocene interglacial into the Plio-Pleistocene limit. The marine deposit at an intermediate altitude (35 masl) has been dated using the unspiked K-Ar method on a pillowed basaltic lava flow. The age of these deposits in Arucas places the transgression in the penultimate (European Mindel/Riss sense) interglacial. The deposits at 12 masl in Las Palmas are attributed to the last Pleistocene interglacial on the basis of their fossil content, which is similar to that of the Matagorda deposits in Lanzarote and Matas Blancas in Fuerteventura. Radiometric dating of a lava flow overlying similar deposits at El Cotillo in Fuerteventura has been carried out. The molluscan fauna associated with the deposits permits an estimation of the sea temperatures by reference to their present biogeographical distributions. The Plio-Pleistocene boundary coincides at Agaete (end of Olduvai event) with a high sea level between 1.8 and 1.75 Ma (oxygen isotopic stage (OIS) 63), the dated marine deposits at Arucas (0.42 Ma) place an interglacial in OIS 11.3 and finally we confirm that, in the Canaries, with only one high sea level with a Senegalese fauna (OIS 5.5), they are not an outpost for the Mediterranean Tyrrhenian (deposits with Strombus) oscillations.

Sea level changes during the last and present interglacials in Sal Island (Cape Verde archipelago)

“…For the African coasts, faunal identifications from Lecointre (1965) Islands (Garda-Talavera, 1987Avila, 2000;Callapez and Ferreira Soares, 2000;Avila et al, 2002Avila et al, , 2008Garda-Talavera and Sanchez-Pinto, 2002;Meco et al, 2002;Zazo et al, 2002Zazo et al, , 2007. The palaeoecological requirements of the Sal Island fauna were recon structed by comparing our fossil data with observations of Morri and Bianchi (1995) and Morri et al (2000) on living shallow epibenthic communities.…”

“…The western Mediterranean, where all warm species have been found in the last interglacial deposits, and the Atlantic-Mediterranean transition area in southern Spain illustrate the pathway of the faunal migrations into the Mediterranean. Focusing on the islands of the Macaronesian biogeographical region, Strombus latus (syn: S. bubonius and the other species of the "Senegalese" warm water fauna have been found in late Pleistocene deposits of the Canary Islands (Meco et al, 1997(Meco et al, , 2002Zazo et al, 2002Zazo et al, , 2005. In the Azores Islands, stratigraphical and sedimentolog ical criteria suggest the existence of marine deposits bearing the warm tropical "Senegalese" fauna of last interglacial age between 4 and 6 masl (Garda-Talavera, 1987;Avila, 2000;Avila et al, 2002Avila et al, , 2008Callapez and Ferreira Soares, 2000).…”

“…There are studies covering the Canary Islands (Meco et aL, 1997(Meco et aL, ,2002Zazo et aL, 2002Zazo et aL, , 2003Zazo et aL, , 2004 ( Steams and Thurber, 1965;Hoang et aI., 1978;Brlickner, 1986;Weisrock et al, 1999;Occhietti et al, 2002) using a variety of dating methods which made it possible to identify the last intergiacial deposits. This paper focuses on the last and present interglacial deposits.…”

Coastal staircase sequences reflecting sea-level oscillations and tectonic uplift during the Quaternary and Neogene

“…Zazo et al, 2003), the Azores, on the island of Flores (Azevedo and Portugal Ferreira, 1999), on the west coast of North America (e.g. North California Hampton, 2000 andSouthern California, Pinter andSorlien, 1991;Pinter et al, 1998), the Canary Islands (Meco et al, 2002(Meco et al, , 2007, on the island of Eleuthera in the Bahamas (e.g. Hearty and Neumann, 2001), Bermuda (e.g.…”

Facies and fauna proxies used to reconstruct the MIS 5 and MIS 7 coastal environments in eastern Tunisia

“…The ex treme scar city of vermetids sug gest the dis per sion of rock blocks and peb bles on which these gastropoda may build large reefs in ar eas with per ma nent ac tive waves and swell as in a few pres ent-day Med i ter ra nean lo cal i ties (Fevret and Sanlaville, 1966;Safriel, 1974; 194 Amel Chakroun and Dalila Zaghbib-Turki Dalongeville, 1995Dalongeville, , 1996Vescogni et al, 2008). How ever, the oc cur rence of Persististrombus latus Gmelin (a se nior syn onym of Strombus bubonius Lamarck) and Stramonita haemastoma (orig i nally at trib uted to the ge nus Thais) in di cates that this Upper Pleistocene fauna in hab ited shal low warm ma rine wa ters (Bard et al, 1994; DeTurck et al, 1999;Rilov et al, 2001;Meco, 2002;Torres et al, 2006;2010; Ramirez et al, 2009; Har ding and Harasewych, 2007; Harzhauser and Kronenberg, 2013;Sessa et al, 2013;Muhs et al, 2014). In the Q1 sec tion (Fig.…”