Discussion on “Aeolian and marine deposits of the Tabakbaai Quarry area, western Cape, South Africa” (South African Journal of Geology 107, 619–632)

Franceschini and Compton (2004) have attempted to better constrain the age of the Late Cenozoic sediments west of Saldanha, given the widely differing results published by previous workers (Dale and McMillan, 1999; Roberts and Brink, 2002). However, their broad range of possible ages as determined on samples using strontium isotope analyses – 0 to 1.4 Ma (minimum range) and 1.7 to 5.9 Ma (maximum range) – (Table 1 Franceschini and Compton, 2004) limits any meaningful improvement of the chronostratigraphy, particularly since the sedimentary succession has a maximum reported time span of only 12 million years (...