Evolution of Brestovská Cave Based on U-Series Dating of Speleothems

Abstract

Abstract:The U-series dating indicates five episodes of flowstone growth in Brestovská Cave, namely: ca. 200 ka, ca. 128-88 ka, ca. 82-65 ka, ca. 64-50 ka, and during the Holocene. The age of flowstones and their spatial distribution within the cave prove that the upper storey of the cave was dewatered before 200 ka. At that time the lower storey also existed and was able to carry the whole water flowing through the cave. It suggests that 200 ka ago the water-table was at similar level as it is at present. Hence, one should accept that the valley bottom was then also at the present level. During at least a part of the MIS 6 the growth of speleothems was possible in the cave. It suggests that the cave was located outside the permafrost zone then. Between 50 ka and Holocene, Brestovská Cave was flooded by invasion waters originating from the melting of the Würm glacier; the water-table was additionally raised due to the blockage of a resurgence by glacifluvial sediments. The flooding event caused the destruction of older deposits, including speleothems, and deposition of fine-grained clastics on the cave walls.

Pleistocene speleothem fracturing in the foreland of the Western Carpathians: a case study from the seismically active eastern margin of the Bohemian Massif

“…Lundberg et al, 2014). Sev eral stud ies sug gested that con di tions were fa vourable for speleothem growth in Cen tral Eu ro pean caves dur ing the MIS 5 and 6 stages (Hercman et al, 2008;Gradziński et al, 2012). This pro vides an ad di tional ar gu ment against the pres ence of per ma frost and the cryo genic or i gin of the speleothem frac tur ing in our caves.…”

Peculiar calcite speleothems filling fissures in calcareous sandstones and their palaeohydrological and palaeoclimatic significance: an example from the Polish Carpathians

“…Sim i larly, sam ples KL 11 and KL 11-1 (mas sive rafts) seem to have formed dur ing the cold MIS 6. How ever, sev eral speleothems of this age are known from cen tral and west ern Eu rope (see Hercman et al, 1997Hercman et al, , 2008Plagnes, 2002). Thus, the age of the speleothems stud ied sug gests that their growth was in some way cli mat i cally con trolled, as for the ma jor ity of speleothems from so lu tion caves.…”

“…The pres ence of speleothems of known age sheds some light on palaeohydrological and palaeotopographic con di tions (Ford, 1973;Ford et al, 1993;Hercman et al, 2008). Cal cite rafts may pro vide valu able in for ma tion in this field.…”

Sedimentary anatomy and hydrological record of relic fluvial deposits in a karst cave conduit

“…10). Coeval precipitation of speleothems occurred in other parts of the DCS (Hercman et al, 1997(Hercman et al, , 2006Hercman, 2000;Podgórska, 2019), as well as in the caves of the Tatra Mountains (Głazek, 1984;Hercman et al, 2008) and the Alps (e.g. Moseley et al, 2014).…”

“…The Scandinavian Ice Sheet supposedly made significant advances in the area of Germany and The Netherlands (Böse et al, 2012), and may have even sneaked into the Czech territory through the Moravian Gate in southern Poland (Marks et al, 2019). On the other hand, coeval cave speleothems in the Tatra Mountains (Hercman et al, 2008;Kicińska et al, 2017) and Outer Carpathians (Gradziński et al, 2012) indicate lack of permafrost and a relatively mild regional climate, perhaps weakly seasonal.…”