Fossiliferous Lana'i deposits formed by multiple events rather than a single giant tsunami

Ken H. Rubin (), Charles H. Fletcher and Clark Sherman
Additional contact information
Ken H. Rubin: SOEST, University of Hawaii
Charles H. Fletcher: SOEST, University of Hawaii
Clark Sherman: SOEST, University of Hawaii

Nature, 2000, vol. 408, issue 6813, 675-681

Abstract: Abstract Giant tsunamis, generated by submarine landslides in the Hawaiian Islands, have been thought to be responsible for the deposition of chaotic gravels high on the southern coastal slopes of the islands of Lana'i and Moloka'i, Hawaii. Here we investigate this hypothesis, using uranium–thorium dating of the Hulopoe gravel (on Lana'i) and a study of stratigraphic relationships, such as facies changes and hiatuses, within the deposit. The Hulopoe gravel contains corals of two age groups, representing marine isotope stages 5e and 7 (∼135,000 and 240,000 years ago, respectively), with significant geographical and stratigraphic ordering. We show that the Hulopoe gravel was formed by multiple depositional events, separated by considerable periods of time, thus invalidating the main premise of the ‘giant wave’ hypothesis. Instead, the gravels were probably deposited during interglacial periods (when sea level was relatively high) by typical Hawaiian shoreline processes such as seasonal wave patterns, storm events and possibly ‘normal’ tsunamis, and reached their present height by uplift of Lana'i.

Date: 2000
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/35047008 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:408:y:2000:i:6813:d:10.1038_35047008

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/35047008

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().