Quaternary Sediment

Quaternary sediment is material deposited during the Quaternary period, the last roughly 2.58 million years spanning the Pleistocene and Holocene epochs. It records the ice-age cycles of glacial and interglacial climate, with sea level swinging by about 120 meters and reshaping where sediment was laid down. On shelves it includes glacial tills, lowstand deltas, and the relict sands now stranded on the outer shelf, while deep-sea Quaternary mud carries a high-resolution paleoclimate signal read from oxygen isotopes and microfossils. Marine geologists target it in cores because its young age gives fine time resolution. Its top is the actively forming Holocene seabed.