Magnetostratigraphy of the Qiliting section (SE China) and its implication for geochronology of the red soil sequences in southern China

Abstract

SUMMARY The red soil sequences in southern and southeastern China provide important terrestrial archives of palaeoclimate and palaeoenvironment and are important sources of Palaeolithic settlements and, therefore, early human occupation. Here we present detailed palaeomagnetic investigation coupled with mineral magnetic and petrographic analyses of a red soil sequence at Qiliting, southeastern China. The sediments contain both strongly magnetic minerals (such as maghemite and magnetite) and weakly magnetic minerals (such as haematite and possibly goethite). Maghemite and haematite were identified as the main carriers of the natural remnant magnetisations. Only haematite dominates the characteristic remnant magnetisations. Palaeomagnetic findings suggest that the Qiliting sedimentary sequence recorded the early Brunhes Chron and the late Matuyama Chron, including the Jaramillo Subchron. Our finding, coupled with previously published magnetostratigraphy, establishes that the red soil sequences in southern China began to accumulate no later than the Jaramillo age (i.e. ∼1.0 Ma). It is further suggested that the capabilities of recording magnetic polarity stratigraphy in Chinese red soil sequences are variable between areas because of different climate regimes.

Rock magnetism investigation of highly magnetic soil developed on calcareous rock in Yun-Gui Plateau, China: Evidence for pedogenic magnetic minerals

“…Maghemite is further transformed into hematite that gives red color to soils (Michel et al, 2010;Torrent et al, 2006). Laboratory experiments showed that when some ligands were adsorbed on the ferrihydrite particles, the ferrihydrite-hematite transformation went through an intermediate, metastable ferrimagnetic nanophase (Barrόn and Torrent, 2002;Barrόn et al, 2003), the particles of which grew in size before its transformation into hematite (Liu et al, 2008a(Liu et al, , 2008b. The concentration of maghemite depends on the rate of weathering of Fe-bearing minerals to ferrihydrite and, therefore, on the pedoenvironment (Schwertmann, 1985).…”

Magnetostratigraphic dating of the hominin occupation of Bailong Cave, central China

“…63 Changxing Qiliting ~1.0 Magnetostratigraphy Liu et al . 64 Liu and Deng 65 Nanjing Tangshan 0.577 + 0.044/−0.034 TIMS U-series Zhao et al . 66 Xuancheng Chenshan ~0.8 Magnetostratigraphy Liu and Deng 65 Liu et al .…”

Mineral magnetism to probe into the nature of palaeomagnetic signals of subtropical red soil sequences in southern China

“…2003; Yin & Guo 2006; Deng et al . 2007; Lu 2000, 2007; Lu et al 2008; Liu et al . 2008; Yuan et al .…”

“…Recently, more Paleolithic sites have been discovered in the red soils (e.g. Fang et al 1997; Hou et al 2000; Xu et al 2007; Liu et al . 2008; Wang et al .…”

“… Schematic map showing the distribution of red soils in southern China and loess in northern China and the sections investigated in this study (after Liu et al . 2008).…”