Ages of the Whitewater and Fairhaven tills in southwestern Ohio and southeastern Indiana

Abstract

Alloisoleucine/isoleucine (aIle/Ile) ratios obtained from fossil mollusc shells collected at localities in southwestern Ohio and southeastern Indiana, where they occur in silt beds associated with the Whitewater and Fairhaven tills, indicate a pre-Wisconsinan age for these tills, which had previously been thought to be early or middle Wisconsinan.The aIle/Ile ratios in shells from beneath the buried soil (Sidney soil) and till exposed near Sidney, Ohio, are most similar to values in shells obtained from Illinoian 2 sediments at Clough Creek in Hamilton County, Ohio; Mechanicsburg southwest, Illinois; and Trousdale Mine in Vermillion Co., Indiana. The first well-developed weathering profile in the sequence above the implied Illinoian age silt at the Sidney cut, therefore, probably represents Sangamonian, early and middle Wisconsinan weathering. Molluscs from an organic silt, exposed near the base of the Bantas Fork cutbank section, also have aIle/Ile ratios that are similar to those measured in shell recovered from the silt at the Sidney cut and from the silt inclusion in inferred Illinoian till at Clough Creek. These data indicate that the organic silt is pre-Wisconsinan. Therefore, the Fairhaven Till, which overlies the silt at the Bantas Fork locality, could be pre-Wisconsinan and the weathering profile developed in the Fairhaven Till may be correlative with the Sangamon Soil of Illinois.The New Paris Interstade silt overlies Whitewater Till at the American Aggregates quarry at Richmond, Indiana. Shells from the silt have aIle/Ile ratios that are intermediate between those obtained from inferred Illinoian age sediments at Bantas Fork, Sidney cut, and Clough Creek, and magnetically reversed sediments at Handley Farm, near Connersville, Fayette County, Indiana. These data suggest a pre-Illinoian age for the silt unit and the underlying Whitewater Till.

The sedimentary record of drifting ice (early Wisconsin Sunnybrook deposit) in an ancestral ice-dammed Lake Ontario, Canada

“…1A) has been viewed as early Wisconsin in age left by an LIS extending south of Toronto (Dreimanis, 1957); however Dreimanis (1992) subsequently placed the Bradtville Till into an Illinoian glacial event leaving glaciolacustrine muds (Member B of the Tyrconnell Formation) as the only early Wisconsin deposit in the Erie Basin. Consequently, it can be agreed that the LIS did not cover all of southern Ontario during the earliest part of the Wisconsin glaciation and did not reach the southernmost margins of the Great Lakes at any time between the end of the Illinoian glaciation and the late Wisconsin (see Curry and Follmer, 1998;Frolking and Szabo, 1998;Miller et al, 1992;Szabo, 1992Szabo, , 1995this paper).…”

The southern Laurentide Ice Sheet

“…1) (Clark, 1992b;Clark et al, 1993;Goldthwait, 1992). These conclusions are based on reinterpretations of loess records and paleosols (Curry, 1989), and new dating techniques such as thermoluminescence and amino-acid methods (Miller et al, 1992;Szabo, 1992). Because absolute dates are few and these methods are still problematic, many of these reinterpretations need to be tested.…”

The geologic framework of the Ohio area of Lake Erie

“…At least two ice sheets scoured the area. Tills of probable Illinoian age and drift of possible pre-Illinoian age are found to the south of Lake Erie (Miller, andothers, 1991: Szabo, 1992) . Wall (1968) reports that deposits overlying bedrock are thickest (83 m) in central Lake Erie.…”