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Mineralogical evidence for a local volcanic origin of the parent material of Bermuda Quaternary paleosols

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

François Prognon ,
Isabelle Cojan ,
Pascal Kindler ,
Médard Thiry  and
Michel Demange
François Prognon*
Affiliation:
Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris, Centre de Géosciences, 77305 Fontainebleau cedex, France Section of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Geneva, Maraîchers 13, 1205 Geneva, Switzerland
Isabelle Cojan
Affiliation:
Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris, Centre de Géosciences, 77305 Fontainebleau cedex, France
Pascal Kindler
Affiliation:
Section of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Geneva, Maraîchers 13, 1205 Geneva, Switzerland
Médard Thiry
Affiliation:
Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris, Centre de Géosciences, 77305 Fontainebleau cedex, France
Michel Demange
Affiliation:
Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris, Centre de Géosciences, 77305 Fontainebleau cedex, France
*
⁎Corresponding author. Present address: BRGM, 3 avenue Claude Guillemin, 45060, Orléans, France.
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Abstract

The alternation of carbonate deposits and paleosols compose the emerged part of the Bermuda archipelago. The pedological units present a complex and diversified mineralogy. Former studies demonstrated that the paleosols are not primarily a product of the unique dissolution of the surrounding carbonates, but contain a massive input of allochthonous non-carbonate detrital material. Researchers during more than the past three decades have attributed this flux of insoluble residues (IR) to Saharan dusts. We carried out systematic field and mineralogical analyses on the Quaternary paleosols from the Bermuda archipelago. Their mineralogical assemblage predominantly includes carbonates, clay minerals (kaolinite, chlorite and chlorite/vermiculite), phosphates, and aluminium and iron oxides/hydroxides. This assemblage is strikingly close to the mineralogy of the weathered volcanic substrate of Bermuda, but noticeably different from the mineralogy of Saharan dust. Moreover, we found volcanic lithoclasts in numerous paleosol profiles all over the archipelago and in all the recorded time intervals. We thus consider the volcanic seamount underlying Bermuda as the main source of non-carbonate minerals detected in the paleosols. This hypothesis further resolves the anomalous maturity of Bermudan paleosols compared to their southern counterparts in the Bahamas and Barbados.

Keywords

BermudaPaleosolsQuaternaryVolcanismSaharan dust
Type
Research Article
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 75 , Issue 1 , January 2011 , pp. 256 - 266
Copyright
University of Washington

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Footnotes

1 Mines Paristech, Centre de Géosciences, 77305 Fontainebleau cedex, France.

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