Over the last ten years the authors investigated hundreds of kilometers of natural outcrops in the New Siberian Islands and adjacent mainland. The key sections, reflecting geological structure of Quaternary deposits in this vast territory were carefully studied. The work was conducted by Russian-American project "Zhohov-2000" and some other projects.

During Quaternary, coastal lowlands and Islands were formed under different depositional environments. Therefore, for example, most part of the Quaternary sequence in New Siberia and Faddeyevski Islands consists of marine and moraine sediments, including fragments of buried glacier. On the contrary, non-glacial terrestrial deposits occur in the Lyakhov Islands and the mainland. This special depositional conditions resulted in the complicated structure of the frozen Quaternary deposits which determined the manner of the research. We used a multidisciplinary approach: geological, biostratigraphic, cryolithological, geomorphological, entomological, palinological; paleomagnetic study, isotopic analysis, 14C and U/Th dating. As a result we provide new stratigraphic scheme of the Quaternary deposits of the Region. The position of the known stratigraphic subdivisions are defined more accurately and new subdivisions are proposed. The most important are the correlations of the marine and terrestrial deposits, as well as glacial and non-glacial deposits (see table).

Reference:

Basilyan A.E., Nikolskiy P.A., Tumskoy V.E., Anisimov M.A. Quaternary stratigraphy of the new Siberian islands and northern Yana-Indigirka lowland (Russian Arctic). Correlation of Pleistocene Events in the Russian North. International Workshop Abstracts. 4-6 December 2006. Saint-Petersburg, 2006, p. 16.