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Interpreting the Paleozoogeography and Sea Level History of Thermally Anomalous Marine Terrace Faunas: A Case Study from the Last Interglacial Complex of San Clemente Island, California

Authors :
Lindsey T. Groves
Daniel R. Muhs
R. Randall Schumann
Source :
Monographs of the Western North American Naturalist. 7:82-108
Publication Year :
2014
Publisher :
Western North American Naturalist, 2014.

Abstract

Marine invertebrate faunas with mixtures of extralimital southern and extralimital northern faunal elements, called thermally anomalous faunas, have been recognized for more than a century in the Quaternary marine terrace record of the Pacific Coast of North America. Although many mechanisms have been proposed to explain this phenomenon, no single explanation seems to be applicable to all localities where thermally anomalous faunas have been observed. Here, we describe one such thermally anomalous fossil fauna that was studied on the second emergent marine terrace at Eel Point on San Clemente Island. The Eel Point terrace complex is a composite feature, consisting of a narrow upper bench (terrace 2a) and a broader lower bench (terrace 2b). Terrace 2b, previously dated from ∼128 ka to ∼114 ka, was thought to date solely to marine isotope stage (MIS) 5.5, representing the peak of the last interglacial period. Nevertheless, the fauna contains an extralimital northern species and several northward-r...

Details

ISSN :
19448236 and 15450228
Volume :
7
Database :
OpenAIRE
Journal :
Monographs of the Western North American Naturalist
Accession number :
edsair.doi...........e00663e6f656111f626330466c3f30f4
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.3398/042.007.0110