Faculty Publications

Magnetostratigraphy of Cave Sediments, Wyandotte Ridge, Crawford County, Indiana: Towards a Regional Correlation

Document Type

Article

Journal/Book/Conference Title

Geomorphology

Volume

11

Issue

1

First Page

75

Last Page

81

Abstract

The polarity of 42 sediment samples obtained from 21 sites in Wyandotte Cave and five smaller satellite caves in Wyandotte Ridge, southern Indiana, is used as a basis for a magnetostratigraphic correlation with sediments in Mammoth Cave, Kentucky. Sediments in caves at elevations between 137 and 162 m have a normal polarity, but the fill between 168 and 171 m exhibits a polarity reversal. The reversal is interpreted to represent the most recent polarity change, suggesting that the upper level of Wyandotte cave was last active at about the same time (not less than 0.78 Ma) as the "C" level in Mammoth Cave which lies at approximately the same elevation. The local base level control in both cave systems is provided by tributaries of the Ohio River. Thus, the correlation is most likely a consequence of the contemporaneous abandonment of upper-level passages in Wyandotte and Mammoth caves during the early Pleistocene reconstruction of the Ohio River drainage. Sediments in caves between 236 and 241 m have a normal polarity. The fill in these (Little Wildcat and Galley Door) caves is probably at least 2.6 Ma old. It appears to correlate with the residuum that delimits the Upper Mitchell Plain Surface (the Pennyroyal Plateau in Kentucky) and, on the basis of our interpretation of the magnetostratigraphy, is older than the fill in the highest ("A" and "B") levels in Mammoth Cave. © 1994.

Department

Department of Geography

Original Publication Date

1-1-1994

DOI of published version

10.1016/0169-555X(94)90043-4

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