The sea-level fingerprint of a Snowball Earth deglaciation

Abstract

Cap dolostones are thought to represent deposition from seas transgressing over formerly glaciated continental margins during Marinoan Snowball deglaciation. Nevertheless, facies associations within some cap dolostones indicate that an episode of regional regression punctuated these transgressive sequence tracts. To date, inferences of sea-level change during and after the Marinoan Snowball deglaciation have been interpreted using simple, qualitative arguments. In the present study, we explore the full spatio-temporal variability of sea-level change during Snowball deglaciation and its aftermath using a gravitationally self-consistent theory that accounts for the deformational, gravitational and rotational perturbations to sea level on a viscoelastic Earth model. The theory is applied to model Marinoan Snowball deglaciation on a generalized Ediacaran paleogeography with a synthetic continental ice-sheet distribution. We find that sea-level change following a synchronous, rapid (2 kyr) collapse of Snowball ice cover will exhibit significant geographic variability, including site-specific histories that are characterized by syn-deglacial sea-level fall or stillstand. Moreover, some sites that experience syn-deglacial transgression will continue to experience transgression in the post-deglacial phase. Taken together, these results suggest that sea-level change recorded by strata capping Snowball glaciogenic units may reflect a more complicated trajectory than previously thought, including deposition that was not limited to the deglaciation phase. These simulations, as well as others that explore the response to asynchronous melting and deglaciation phases of longer duration, demonstrate that an episode of regional regression interrupting a cap dolostone transgressive sequence tract may reflect one of several processes (or their combination): (1) near field adjustment associated with rapid local melting during an otherwise global hiatus in deglaciation; (2) post-glacial uplift of sites during a period of slowing deglaciation, and (3) a transition, at some sites, from a sea-level fall dominated by post-glacial uplift to a phase of sea-level rise due to eustasy and peripheral bulge subsidence throughout an extended (order 50 kyr or greater) Snowball deglaciation.

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