Robert P. Ackert Jr.1, Sujoy Mukhopadhyay1, Byron R. Parizek2, and Harold W. Borns3. (1) Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, 20 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, (2) Department of Physics, The College of New Jersey, Ewing, NJ 08628, (3) Climate Change Institute, University of Maine, Orono, ME 04469
In the interior of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS),
mountains that project through the ice sheet serve as dipsticks that gauge past
ice sheet elevations. Thickening
of the WAIS is recorded by moraines, erratics, and trimlines on mountain
slopes. In the Ohio Range, near
the WAIS divide, such features indicate that the last highstand was ~ 120 m
higher than present. The youngest exposure ages of erratics near the trimline
indicate that the last highstand occurred ~12.5 ka. However, most erratics have older exposure ages. Prominent
clusters of exposure ages occur around 30 and 70 ka, periods corresponding to
the onset of glacial stages in the d18O
record. 21Ne exposure
ages of cavernously weathered bedrock below the trimline indicate > 3.5 Ma of cumulative
exposure. In contrast, nominal 10Be
exposure ages of the same samples are ~1.1 Ma indicating that the bedrock was
ice-covered for a minimum of 1Ma.