Flowstones from the Račiška Pečina Cave (SW Slovenia) Record 3.2-Ma-Long History

(A) Location of the study site in Slovenia; (B) cave map and profile location (marked with a red circle) (modified from Zupan Hajna et al., 2008); (C) studied profile scheme: grey shading — flowstones; brown shading — clays; diagonal shading (light blue) — collapsed limestone blocks; yellow crosshatching — younger speleothem cover; red line — principal disconformity; F1 — faunal position; USp — position of Ursus speleus sp (cave bear) bone fragments; RP — sampling profile for C and O isotope analyses; and (D) magnetostratigraphic log according Pruner et al., (2009) correlated with the GPTS (Cande and Kent, 1995); black — normal polarity, white — reverse polarity, grey — transitional polarity, wavy line — disconformity. GPTS, Geomagnetic polarity time scale.

Fig 2

Stable oxygen (A) and carbon (B) isotope compositions in the RP profile. Vertical red lines — principal disconformity; vertical, dotted, and brown lines — main clay layers.

Fig 3

Comparison of similarity indicators in the Medi and LR04 records to the RP oxygen isotope composition (calculation in Gen-Corr by Pawlak and Hercman, 2016); (A) boxplots for the upper part of the RP profile and (B) boxplots for the lower part of the RP profile; the vertical axis represents the 2s uncertainty of the similarity indicator.

Fig 4

Correlation results of the RP oxygen isotope record with the LR04 and Medi records. All data presented were normalised and the marine d18O data were inverted. (A) RP curve (blue line) for the upper segment of the profile correlated with the LR04 curve (black line); (B) RP curve (blue line) for the lower segment of the profile correlated with the Medi curve (black line); (C) age-depth model for the upper segment of the profile; and (D) age-depth model for the lower segment of the profile; red lines — confidence intervals; grey boxes — hiatuses; red boxes —principal disconformity.

Fig 5

The final set of stable carbon and oxygen isotope records of the RP profile; (A) MIS scale (warm — red; cold — blue) (Lisiecki and Raymo, 2005); (B) stable oxygen isotope record (smoothed data — blue; raw data — grey); and (C) stable carbon isotope record (smoothed data — black; raw data — grey); grey boxes — hiatuses; red box — principal disconformity; green boxes — episodes where the R2 value is significantly greater, R2 = 0.4538, R2 = 0.4944, and R2 = 0.6065. MIS, Marine isotope stage.

Fig 6

Correlation of d13C and d18O values from the entire RP profile (p < 0.05).

Detailed data of benchmarks used for OIS.

No.	Age (Ma)	Age uncertainty	Depth in RP profile (mm)	Depth uncertainty (mm)	δ¹⁸O [‰]	δ¹³C [‰]	Type of benchmark
1	0.12	0.02	65	2.5	−4.90	−6.84	U-series age
2	0.495	0.015	210	2.5	−5.32	−9.20	Age at model^*
3	0.78	0.0117	280	2.5	−5.45	−9.22	Paleomagnetic
4	0.80	0.02	295	2.5	−5.39	−9.72	Age at model^*
5	2.58	0.0387	1572.5	2.5	–	–	Paleomagnetic
6	3.2	0.048	1860	2.5	−5.28	−7.75	Paleomagnetic

Results of U-series dating of the RP profile.

Lab. no.	Sample	U cont. (ppm)	²³⁴U/²³⁸U AR	²³⁰Th/²³⁴U AR	²³⁰Th/²³²Th AR	Age (ka)	^*Corrected age (ka)
1537	RP 1	0.1236 ± 0.0061	1.117 ± 0.067	0.698 ± 0.045	14 ± 3	$126_{- 13}^{+ 14}$ 126_{ - 13}^{ + 14}	120 ± 20
1538	RP66	0.1239 ± 0.0049	1.239 ± 0.059	1.068 ± 0.051	1.184 ± 0.052	>450	$(440_{- 130}^{+ inf})$ \left( {440_{ - 130}^{ + \inf }} \right)

eISSN:: 1897-1695
Language:: English

Publication timeframe:: Volume Open
Journal Subjects:: Geosciences, other

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Flowstones from the Račiška Pečina Cave (SW Slovenia) Record 3.2-Ma-Long History

Published Online: Apr 14, 2021

Page range: 31 - 45

Received: Oct 07, 2019

Accepted: Feb 12, 2021

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/geochr-2021-0004

Keywordsstable isotopes, paleoclimate, OIS method, paleomagnetic data, Dinarides

© 2021 P. Sierpień et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

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