Stratigraphy and paleomagnetism of glacial and loess-soil deposits on the West-Siberian plain

A complex of geological, biostratigraphical, paleopedological, magnetostratigraphical, and radiometrical techniques is used for dismembering and correlation. A series of magnetostratigraphic columns has been composed and compared for glacial, alluvial, lacustrine, and loess-soil deposits. The datums are such paleomagnetic borders as: Bruhnes/Matuyama boundary, the base of the Jaramillo subchron, and excursion Blake. Their position in sections is discussed. A loess-soil succession is considered in detail, with eight stages of intense soil formation and nine stages of loess accumulation established on the Belovo reference section. In number of the climatostratigraphic cyclites, it is comparable with the world's standard sections of similar genesis. Special attention is given to description of the Early Pleistocene stages of soil formation. The Malinovy pedocomplex has been described for the first time; it is related to the final stage of the Matuyama chron and is characterized by the fauna similar to the Petropavlovsk (Karai-Dubin) fauna. Two alternative versions are proposed to correlate glacial and loess-soil deposits on the West-Siberian Plain and to compare them with the isotope-oxygen scale. Analysis is given to causes of discrepancy in interpretation of the results obtained by different methods of study (magnetostratigraphy, paleopedology, paleotheriology, and TL-dating).