Drift, evidently of Illinoian age, was deposited on St. Lawrence Island at the margin of an ice cap that covered the highlands of the Chukotka Peninsula of Siberia and spread far eastward on the continental shelf of northern Bering Sea. Underlying the drift on the northwestward part of the island are mollusk-bearing beds deposited during the Kotzebuan Transgression.

A comparison of mollusk faunas from St. Lawrence Island, Chukotka Peninsula, and Kotzebue Sound suggests that the present northward flow through Bering and Anadyr Straits was reversed during the Kotzebuan Transgression. Cold arctic water penetrated southward and southwestward bringing an arctic fauna to the Gulf of Anadyr. Warmer Pacific water probably entered eastern Bering Sea, passed eastward and northeastward around eastern and northern St. Lawrence Island, and then became entrained in the southward currents that passed through Anadyr Strait.

Nelson Bay Cave is located on the Robberg Peninsula (34°06′ S, 23°24′ E) at Plettenberg Bay, Cape Province, South Africa. Excavation of the Late Quaternary fill of the cave has provided a rich assemblage of mammalian remains dated between ca. 18,000 and 5000 radiocarbon years B.P. Identification and analysis of these remains has shown that important changes in the composition of the mammalian fauna took place first about 12,000 B.P. and again about 9000 B.P. The earlier change is especially clear-cut and is interpreted to reflect the disappearance of grassland from the area as well as the influence of rising sea level. Both faunal changes were accompanied by changes in associated artifactual materials and it is suggested that faunal and cultural changes were causally linked. The mammalian species dated between 18,000 and 12,000 B.P. include the latest recorded Sub-Saharan occurrences of some extinct taxa and indicate that terminal Pleistocene/Early Holocene megafaunal extinctions may have been more important in Southern Africa than has hitherto been thought.

The southeastern coast of South Africa's Cape Province underwent complex geomorphic evolution during the late Cenozoic, leaving a variety of erosional forms and a detailed, complementary record of distinctive sediments. The latter include several new lithostratigraphic units and paleosol horizons. An almost ubiquitous planation surface, the 200-m Coastal Platform, is associated with the fanglomeratic and deltaic Keurbooms Formation (late Tertiary?). A major sea level at +120 m truncated a laterite paleosol and was followed by accumulation of land rubble and littoral deposits to 101 m, constituting the Formosa Formation. Then follow sea level stages at +60, +30, and +15–20 m, as well as several generations of weathered eolianite, including the Brakkloof Formation with the deep superposed Brakkloof Soil. Beaches at +5–12 m, with thermophile mollusca and C14 dates of >40,000 yr mark the Swartkops horizon, probably of Eem interglacial age. Next are cryoclastic screes and cave deposits, and ultimately the podsolic Brenton Soil of the Würm Interpleniglacial. Transgressive eolianites and coastal dunes after 16,000 BP were interrupted by pedogenesis ca. 7500 BP and stabilized after 4200 BP when sea level reached +2.5 m. Geomorphic instability in stream valleys after 1000 BP was followed by man-induced activation of the coastal dunes, since the late 18th century. Environmental patterns accompanying this succession at various times included (1) semiarid pediplanation, (2) interior dune formation, and (3) intensive, cold-climate denudation, all under open vegetation in what is now closed, humid forest; by contrast, some of the more aberrant paleosols indicate warmer, perhumid conditions.

Quaternary occurrences of voles of the genus Phenacomys south of the North American continental glaciation range in age from Kansan through early Recent times and are mapped from twenty fossil localities. Phenacomys cannot be used as an index fossil, but makes a good climatic indicator because of its modern boreal affinities. It is largely confined to the present day Canadian and Hudsonian Life Zones of North America.

The Mosbeck Site is in the southern part of the Lake Agassiz basin in northwestern Minnesota. The stratigraphic section at the site consists of seven lithologic units, which are from bottom to top (A) unsorted, pebbly, sandy, silty clay, (B) coarse gravel, (C) silty sand, (D) peat, (E) fine sand, (F) interbedded sand and gravel, and (G) unbedded dirty gravel. The lower few centimeters of unit E are unoxidized and contain black spruce and tamarack driftwood, which has been radiocarbon dated at 9940 ± 160 BP (I-3880). Units C-E contain numerous, well-preserved insect and mollusk remains. These fossils have been compared with modern species, and at least 76 insect and 15 mollusk taxa are present. Assuming that their ecological tolerances have changed little in the past 10,000 years, they provide valuable information about the environment of Lake Agassiz. Few of the insects are now found in the region, indicating that the environment has changed. With few exceptions the species present indicate that the climate and vegetation at the time were similar to the present-day climate and vegetation of southeastern Manitoba.

The lithology and faunal contents of the sediment are interpreted as follows. Unit A is Late Wisconsinan glacial sediment. Unit B is a lag concentrate formed by wave action during a regressive phase of Lake Agassiz. Unit C is the sediment of a small body of water that formed when the level of Lake Agassiz had dropped below the site. The banks were covered with a spruce forest. Open water gave way to swampy conditions, and unit D was formed. Both units C and D were deposited during the low-water Moorhead Phase of Lake Agassiz. Units E and F are shoreline sediment deposited as the lake level rose, drowning the vegetation. Unit G is modern ditch spoil.

A sea cliff facing the open ocean 3 km north of Kalaloch, Washington, and exposing 32 m of interbedded peat, clay, sand, and gravel contains a unique continuous record of late-Pleistocene vegetation and environments on the western side of the Olympic Peninsula. The record obtains from the palynology of plant communities in the unglaciated refugium. Fourteen radiocarbon dates from peat beds in the sea cliff reveal that the record spans the time from 16,700 B. P. to greater than 47,000 B. P. The earliest organic deposits are estimated to date from 70,000 B. P. Pollen assemblages from 222 sample levels in a measured section, divided into 16 zones, are correlated, in the main, with the sequence of Salmon springs, Olympia, and Fraser geologic-climatic units in the Puget Lowland. Correlation derives from the fluctuations of a July average temperature curve reconstructed from the modern vegetation and climatic equivalents of the pollen assemblages. The sequence of stadial and interstadial environments depicted at Kalaloch is found to be more complex than is indicated by the Puget Lowland succession.

The sea cliffs of the western Olympic Peninsula are composed chiefly of discontinuous beds of unconsolidated gravel, sand, silt, and peat of Pleistocene age. Two lower stratigraphic units, the “Steamboat Creek gravel” and “Joe Creek silt”, were deposited probably during the Puyallup Interglaciation; the upper unit, the “Kalaloch silt”, was deposited during an interval that extends from Salmon Springs Glaciation through Fraser Glaciation. Radiocarbon dates of the Kalaloch silt range from about 17,000 to > 48,000 BP.

Pollen analysis and stratigraphic correlation of the sea cliff sediments indicate that the present vegetation of the Olympic Peninsula has existed in this part of western Washington since the Puyallup Interglacial. During the Puyallup, the low elevation Tsuga heterophylla-Picea forest or its seral stages were predominant. During subsequent glaciations the low elevation forest was replaced by montane or alpine plant communities in areas near the ice front. At sites farther removed from glacial termini, low elevation forest apparently persisted, thriving in centers from which constituent species spread during interstadials.

Pollen and macrofossil evidence for the nature of the vegetation during glacial and interglacial periods in the regions south of the Wisconsinan ice margin is still very scarce. Modern opinions concerning these problems are therefore predominantly derived from geological evidence only or are extrapolated from pollen studies of late Wisconsinan deposits. Now for the first time pollen and macrofossil analyses are available from south-central Illinois covering the Holocene, the entire Wisconsinan, and most probably also Sangamonian and late Illinoian time. The cores studied came from three lakes, which originated as kettle holes in glacial drift of Illinoian age near Vandalia, Fayette County. The Wisconsinan ice sheet approached the sites from the the north to within about 60 km distance only.

One of the profiles (Pittsburg Basin) probably reaches back to the late Illinoian (zone 1), which was characterized by forests with much Picea. Zone 2, most likely of Sangamonian age, represents a period of species-rich deciduous forests, which must have been similar to the ones that thrive today south and southeast of the prairie peninsula. During the entire Wisconsinan (14C dates ranging from 38,000 to 21,000 BP) thermophilous deciduous trees like Quercus, Carya, and Ulmus occurred in the region, although temporarily accompanied by tree genera with a more northerly modern distribution, such as Picea, which entered and then left south-central Illinois during the Woodfordian. Thus it is evident that arctic climatic conditions did not prevail in the lowlands of south-central Illinois (about 38°30′ lat) during the Wisconsinan, even at the time of the maximum glaciation, the Woodfordian. The Wisconsinan was, however, not a period of continuous forest. The pollen assemblages of zone 3 (Altonian) indicate prairie with stands of trees, and in zone 4 the relatively abundant Artemisia pollen indicates the existence of open vegetation and stands of deciduous trees, Picea, and Pinus. True tundra may have existed north of the sites, but if so its pollen rain apparently is marked by pollen from nearby stands of trees. After the disappearance of Pinus and Picea at about 14,000 BP (estimated!), there developed a mosaic of prairies and stands of Quercus, Carya, and other deciduous tree genera (zone 5). This type of vegetation persisted until it was destroyed by cultivation during the 19th and 20th century. Major vegetational changes are not indicated in the pollen diagram for the late Wisconsinan and the Holocene.

The dating of zones 1 and 2 is problematical because the sediments are beyond the14C range and because of the lack of stratigraphic evidence. The zones dated as Illinoian and Sangamonian could also represent just a Wisconsinan stadial and interstadial. This possibility, however, seems to be contradicted by the late glacial and interglacial character of the forest vegetation of that time.

The paha of northwestern Illinois are longitudinal dunes developed in toto during Woodfordian time. Cores of noneolian materials, such as are typical in the paha of northeastern Iowa, are either not present or much reduced in numbers in the paha of Illinois. Variation in the thickness of the surface blanket of Peoria Loess accounts for the total topographic expression of the Illinois paha.

Underlying the Peoria Loess is a sequence of Pleistocene deposits consisting of two tills of Illinoian age, and the Plano Silt and Roxana Loess of Altonian age. Radiocarbon ages obtained from the Plano Silt range from 41,900 ± 1300 to 34,630 ± 710 radiocarbon years B.P.

The issue of sea level during the last interstadial revolves largely around the problem of achieving reliable 14C dates for shell carbonate from Late Pleistocene shallow marine and littoral deposits. A set of 27 samples were collected from Late Pleistocene reefs in New Guinea, and measurements made of 13C, 14C, plus the degree of recrystallisation (determined by X-ray diffraction). The original fibrous aragonite structure of the samples (corals and clams) is seen in thin section to recrystallise in two quite different modes. The carbon isotope results strongly suggest that one mode, the sparry calcite recrystallisation, represents an open geochemical system which allows contamination by more recent 14C, while the subtle coarsening mode of recrystallisation represents a closed system, often yielding reliable results. The reliability of the latter can be validated if a similarly recrystallised sample, known to be outside the range of 14C dating, shows a background 14C count.

In meltwater derived from the Moiry Glacier (Switzerland), sorption of major cations on suspended sediments can be a significant factor in chemical transport. In meq/100 g, especially for calcium and potassium, sorption on suspended particles is more important in the waters resulting from percolation through morainic deposits than in subglacial waters. Sorption of major cations should not be neglected, either in quantitative studies of chemical denudation or in studies related to the glacial melt-water environment.