Glacial and nonglacial sediments of Matuyama paleomagnetic age on Banks Island, Canadian Arctic Archipelago

Preliminary paleomagnetic investigations of unconsolidated sediments from Duck Hawk Bluffs on Banks Island, in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, have defined magnetite-residing magnetizations that exhibit systematic polarity correlations between temporally equivalent units from spatially separate stratigraphic sections. The preglacial Worth Point Formation sediments and overlying Duck Hawk Bluff Formation sediments (including marine and glacial deposits laid down during the Banks Glaciation) have magnetically reversed directions and therefore are probably of Matuyama age (<730 Ka). Deposits of the younger Morgan Bluffs and Cape Collinson interglacials and Thomsen and Amundsen glaciations are normally magnetized and therefore of Brunhes age (<730 Ka). These sesults provide the first minimum-age estimate for the Worth Point Formation organic deposits and for the Banks Glaciation, the oldest and strongest glaciation recorded in the western Arctic. The new time framework will facilitate correlations with terrestrial sequences of Beringia and early Pleistocene Arctic Ocean sediments.