The Mallik Anticline is a geologic structure in the Mackenzie Delta in the Canadian Arctic. Tectonics throughout the Cenozoic, with compressional phases in the early Eocene to the late Miocene, formed this large, domed structure that is today an important source of hydrocarbons. Gas hydrates occur in the clastic sedimentary rocks of the Oligocene to Pleistocene Kugmallite, Mackenzie Bay, and Iperk sequences, which were essentially formed by deltaic processes. The presence of hydrocarbon gases within the permafrost zone in the Canadian Arctic has led to extensive exploration and production activities in the region since the mid-1960s, and the investigations by geologists and geophysicists have already been published in numerous scientific articles to date.
The associated report (Chabab and Kempka, 2023) describes the implementation of the first field-scale 3D static geologic model of the Mallik site, which was created using data from well logs and 2D seismic reflection profiles. The dataset presented here provides elevation depths and thickness data of the three distinct sequence boundaries Kugmallit-Richards, Mackenzie Bay-Kugmallit and Iperk-Mackenzie Bay as well as fault data from the Mallik site.
The entrance of Earth's climate into the present icehouse state during a time of rapid temperature decline in the late Pliocene was intensively investigated during the past decade. Even though it is well documented in marine archives, detailed reconstruction of the Pliocene-Pleistocene climatic evolution of central Europe is hampered by a general lack of data. The work presented here is based on sedimentary material from drill cores obtained at three sites within the Heidelberg Basin (Germany). The scientific relevance of this unique archive was discovered only in the last decade. The hundreds of metres thick sequences of mainly fluvial sediments record the evolution of the environment and climatic conditions during the late Pliocene and the entire Pleistocene of western central Europe. In our present study, we implement unpublished mineral magnetic S-ratio data and new evidence from X-ray analysis into two previously completed studies on the magnetic polarity stratigraphy and the magnetic mineralogy of the Pliocene to Pleistocene sediments of the Heidelberg Basin. The total set of data enable distinction of environmental and climatic processes, and unveil details on the climatic conditions of continental Europe during this period. We demonstrate the dominance of an Mediterranean type to subtropical type climate during the Pliocene. Cyclic variations in the groundwater table in the Rhine flood plain resulted in redox fluctuations, which led to the decomposition of the primary detrital mineral assemblage. Authigenic Fe oxides, particularly haematite, formed during dry periods. A rapid transition into cooler and moister conditions occurred at the end of the Pliocene, as indicated by the persistence of Fe sulphides, especially greigite. A high groundwater table and the associated reducing conditions have largely persisted to the present day. We show that the rapid transition from warm to cooler and moister climatic conditions in central Europe during the final Pliocene is a regional response to the intensification of Northern Hemisphere glaciation (iNHG). This work supplements existing knowledge of the climatic evolution of central Europe during the Pliocene-Pleistocene transition by data from a region from which little data has been available. A sideglance to climatic archives elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere (e.g., North Atlantic Ocean, Chinese Loess Plateau, Russian arctic) is used to show the coincidence of the iNHG events in quite different environmental regimes.
Cenozoic global TEX86-derived sea surface temperature (SST) compilation from all published marine TEX86 records and new data measured in this study (ODP/DSDP Sites 516, 588, 667, 704, 730, 754, 1146 and 1263). This table contains all GDGT measurements, calculated indices, SSTs and SST gradients.