ABSTRACT This paper presents a detailed sedimentologic data set of minor moraines (heights ≤2.0 m, widths ≤14 m, lengths ≤108 m) that formed beginning near the end of the Little Ice Age by Schwarzensteinkees, a valley glacier in Austria. Sorted sediment and stratified diamict dominate five exposures, and compact massive diamict exists in one exposure. This sediment is interpreted as proglacial outwash and subglacial till. Most moraine sediment shows deformation structures (e.g., smaller and larger folds), and some units contain evidence of water escape. Other units maintain their original subhorizontality. All moraines contain unequivocal evidence of having formed through deformation by pushing during ice-margin fluctuations. Minor moraines formed more specifically by three identified processes: (1) pushing of outwash sediment; (2) stacking and pushing of outwash sediment; and (3) pushing of outwash sediment and freezing-on of subglacial till. Our data suggest that the sedimentologic composition of the valley fill influences the style of push-moraine formation. In this case, the friable nature of outwash sediments can increase the efficiency of the pushing ice front and the likelihood of sediment collapse down the proximal ice-contact slope after ice retreat. This study contributes to our understanding of sediment transport and deposition in high-mountain environments.

ABSTRACT The last-glacial megaflood Kankakee Torrent streamlined hills and the remarkably straight backslope of the Kalamazoo moraine (Lake Michigan lobe of the Laurentide ice sheet) in southwestern Michigan. Flooding ensued as proglacial Lake Dowagiac overflowed across remnants of the Lake Michigan lobe at the position of the inner margin of the Kalamazoo moraine as glacial debris and ablating ice were pinned against Portage Prairie. Proglacial Lake Dowagiac developed in the Dowagiac River valley as the lobe retreated to form the Valparaiso moraine. A minimum age of the Kankakee Torrent (18.7 ± 0.6 k.y. B.P) is indicated by the weighted mean value of six optically stimulated luminescence ages determined from quartz sand in glaciofluvial sediment on the Kalamazoo moraine (Lake Michigan and Saginaw lobes). This value is consistent with tighter age control based on radiocarbon ages of tundra plants within silty sediment forming ice-walled lake plains and in a torrent-scoured lake basin (Oswego channel) in Illinois. Crosscutting relationships of well-dated moraines indicate the Kankakee Torrent occurred sometime between 19.7 and 18.9 calibrated (cal.) k.y. B.P. as it skirted the south margin of the Valparaiso Morainic System.

Abstract Early Jurassic plesiosaurian fossils are rare in the Scandinavian region, with a few isolated bones and teeth known from Bornholm, and anecdotal finds from East Greenland. The only other identifiable specimens derive from Toarcian-aged (based on ammonites) erratics deposited during Late Pleistocene glacial advances near the town of Ahrensburg, NE of Hamburg in northern Germany. The geographical source of these transported clasts is debated, but reconstructed ice-flow directions and lithofacies comparisons implicate either the offshore Baltic Sea between the Island of Bornholm and Mecklenburg–Vorpommern (Germany) or, less probably, south of the Danish Archipelago (Mecklenburg Bay). These regions collectively bordered the Fennoscandian landmass and adjacent Ringkøbing-Fyn Island in the late Early Jurassic, and were dominated by near-shore marine deltaic to basinal settings. The Ahrensburg plesiosaurian remains include postcranial elements reminiscent of both the microcleidid Seeleyosaurus and the rhomaelosaurid Meyerasaurus . These occur alongside other classic ‘Germanic province’ marine amniotes, such as the teleosaurid crocodyliform Steneosaurus and ichthyosaurian Stenopterygius cf. quadriscissus : thus, advocating faunal continuity between Scandinavia and southern Germany during the Toarcian, and a less pronounced marine reptile faunal provinciality than previously assumed.