LATE QUATERNARY STRATIGRAPHIC COMPARISONS IN SOUTH-CENTRAL ONTARIO AND WESTERN NEW YORK, AND THE ISOTOPE STAGE 5E TO EARLY 3 INTERVAL

A global oceanic paleotemperature curve for the last several hundred thousand years has been available since the 1950's. There is much interest in developing comparable paleotemperature curves for terrestrial environments, heightened recently by concern over global warning and a search for past analogs. Glacial presence in the region blanks out intervals for 14C dating from 14,000 to 23,000 BP and much of 32,000 to 45,000, with the 14C dating limit normally at about 50,000 years.

The stratigraphies of eight sites, five of which I have studied (Toronto, Guelph, Waterloo and Innerkip, Ontario, and Fernbank, New York - plus Haight, Ontario and Gowanda and Otto, New York) is summarized, along with fossil records and available chronologies. Common features include one to three late Wisconsin tills (Port Bruce and Nissouri phases), a middle water-laid fossiliferous sequence with various high finite or minimum 14C dates, in some cases a paleosol, and a lowest till. Most of the organic sequences exhibit only boreal or cool interstadial fossil assemblages. At most sites, stratigraphic sequences are very incomplete, and a recent trend to interpret deposits as older than previously considered leaves long spans of time not represented by sediments. Toronto is the most complete sequence, but most is undated.

Application of dating methods other than radiocarbon, such as shell amino acids, sediment luminescence, and clast exposure, is urgently needed to sort out the history from 130,000 to 50,000 years ago.