U-Pb ages and number of Cenozoic glaciations on King George Island, West Antarctica
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24425/ppr.2025.156303Abstract
King George Island, in the South Shetland Islands, is pre-eminent for containing evidence for potentially up to five Antarctic glaciations, including two Eocene examples. U-Pb ages of zircons in basalts and new field observations are presented for the glacial units. Following the disproval of the Eocene Kraków Glaciation, the so called ‘Hervé Cove tillite’ was also proposed as the oldest terrestrial glaciogenic sediment in Antarctica, but it does not display any diagnostic features characteristic of glacial till. It is reinterpreted as a (non-glacial) lahar deposit, thus removing all known evidence for Eocene ice on the island. New U-Pb ages on two basalt lavas in the Polonez Cove Formation constrain their eruption to ca. 26 Ma (early Chattian) and unambiguously confirm a correlation of the Polonez Glaciation with global oxygen isotope stage Oi2b. Zircon xenocrysts from the same rocks include early Cretaceous, Cambrian, Ediacaran, late Neoproterozoic to early Mesoproterozoic and early Paleoproterozoic ages, mirroring published U-Pb ages on cobbles and boulders from the same formation. They strengthen interpretations that indicate a remarkably distant provenance (ca. 3000 km) and extensive ice in the Late Oligocene, early in the development of the Antarctic Ice Sheet. The youngest zircons in a dyke that intrudes the Vauréal Peak tillite (Legru Glaciation) yielded latest Oligocene to earliest Miocene ages (27–23 Ma), However, grains of these zircons are not idiomorphic. They were most probably derived from older rocks and consequently do not determine the age of the intrusion itself. Hence, the age of the Vauréal Peak tillite, the youngest Cenozoic glacial unit on King George Island, remains uncertain. There are thus only three unambiguous Cenozoic (pre-Quaternary) glacial units on King George Island, representing the Polonez, Melville and Legru glaciations.
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