Cosmogenic (super 36) Cl and (super 10) Be ages of Quaternary glacial and fluvial deposits of the Wind River Range, Wyoming
Cosmogenic (super 36) Cl and (super 10) Be ages of Quaternary glacial and fluvial deposits of the Wind River Range, Wyoming
Geological Society of America Bulletin (November 1997) 109 (11): 1453-1463
- absolute age
- alkaline earth metals
- Be-10
- beryllium
- boulders
- Bull Lake Glaciation
- Cenozoic
- chlorine
- Cl-36
- clastic sediments
- cosmogenic elements
- dates
- exposure age
- Fremont County Wyoming
- geochronology
- glaciation
- halogens
- isotopes
- metals
- moraines
- North America
- Pleistocene
- Quaternary
- radioactive isotopes
- Rocky Mountains
- sediments
- terraces
- U. S. Rocky Mountains
- United States
- upper Pleistocene
- upper Quaternary
- Wind River Range
- Wyoming
- west-central Wyoming
- Sacagawea Ridge
We measured cosmogenic (super 36) Cl in 56 samples from boulders on moraines and fluvial terraces in the vicinity of the Wind River Range, Wyoming. We also measured (super 10) Be in 10 of the same samples. Most of the (super 10) Be ages were in good agreement with the (super 36) Cl ages, indicating that rock-surface erosion rates were very low. The oldest moraine investigated, the type Sacagawea Ridge site, yielded only a limiting minimum age of >232 ka. The oldest moraines in the type Bull Lake complex also could be constrained only to >130 ka. The main sequence of type Bull Lake moraines yielded age distributions indicating deposition within the intervals 130 to 100 ka and 120 to 100 ka; the best estimates are closer to the upper limits of these ranges, and associated uncertainties are in the range of 10% to 15%. These uncertainties could permit deposition in either marine isotope stage 6 or stage 5d. We found no evidence of glacial deposits dating to marine isotope stage 4. Both Bull Lake-age moraines from Fremont Lake, on the opposite side of the Wind River Range, and boulders on a fluvial terrace above the Wind River, gave age distributions very similar to that of the second oldest Bull Lake advance (ca. 130 to 100 ka). The distribution of boulder ages for Pinedale moraines at Bull Lake indicated deposition between 23 and 16 ka, nearly identical to the distribution of (super 10) Be ages previously reported for the type Pinedale moraines at Fremont Lake.