Sedimentary architecture of the Bohai Sea China over the last 1 Ma and implications for sea-level changes

- Marine and terrestrial deposition alternated in the Bohai Sea over the last ∼1 Ma.
- Sea-level changes governed the sedimentary architecture in the Bohai Sea.
- The MPT influenced the deposition through modulating sea-level changes.

Sedimentary architecture dominated by transgression-regression cycles in the shallow Bohai shelf region contains information about global sea-level, climate and local tectonics. However, previous studies of transgression-regression cycles in this region at orbital timescales that extend back to the early Pleistocene are sparse, mainly because of the shortage of well-dated long cores. Although transgression-regression sedimentary cycles in the region have been interpreted in terms of local tectonics, sea-level, and climate change, the detailed structure of marine transgressions and their significance for Quaternary global sea-level variations remains to be examined. In this study, we present an integrated sedimentological, geochemical and paleontological study of a 212.4 m (∼1 Ma) core (BH08) recovered from the Bohai Sea, China, for which an astronomically-based age model is available. Correspondence between marine-terrestrial sedimentary cycles and global sea-level fluctuations suggests that stacking of marine and terrestrial sediments was driven mainly by glacio-eustatic sea-level fluctuations in a context in which tectonic subsidence was largely balanced by sediment supply over the last ∼1 Ma. We report a dominant 100-kyr cycle beginning at ∼650 ka, which reflects the worldwide influence of the mid-Pleistocene transition (MPT) in sea-level records. We find that neritic deposits after the MPT were relatively thicker than before the MPT, which indicates an important control of the MPT on sedimentary architecture through lengthening of the duration of sea-level highstands.