Research Article
Multiple climate cooling prior to Sturtian glaciations: Evidence from chemical index of alteration of sediments in South China
Jing Huang, Lianjun Feng, Dingbiao Lu, Qirui Zhang, Tao Sun, Xuelei Chu
Published:
October 31, 2014
DOI:
10.1038/srep06868
License:
Copyright © 2014, Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved2014Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reservedThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder in order to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Abstract
Investigation of climatic conditions prior to the Sturtian glaciations is critical to understanding the trigger mechanism for the series of Neoproterozoic global glaciations. In this study, we report high-resolution chemical index of alteration (CIA) records in the sediments of South China prior to the Sturtian glaciation (820~720 Ma). Our results showed there occurred multiple climate cooling before the Sturtian glaciations in South China: (1) a series of episodic and possibly global climate cooling periods from ca. 750 Ma to 725 Ma, which also caused some diachronous regional glaciations; (2) a permanent climate cooling period between ca. 800 Ma and 770 Ma, probably contemporaneous to the global “Bitter Springs stage” δ13C negative excursion; (3) a climate cooling period between ca. 815 Ma and 810 Ma. The three stages of climate cooling are also supported by their correspondence to previously reported extremely low δ18O records of igneous/metamorphic minerals from South China. These climate cooling periods also coincide with the magmatism and rifting events in South China. We argue that tectonic movements were the primary control on the climate cooling before the Neoproterozoic global glaciations.