On Cold Transgressions in the Bering Sea

A. A. Svitoch and E. E. Taldenkova

Geographical Faculty, Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia

Received March 6, 2000; in final form, September 4, 2000

Abstract—Assemblages of fossil mollusks containing numerous Arctic species were encountered in the Kara-
gin and Ossora deposits of the East Kamchatka and Krest deposits of Chukotka. They bring evidence that, dur-
ing their accumulation, at the beginning of the Early Pleistocene and at the end of the Middle Pleistocene, rep-
resentatives of the Arctic mollusk fauna penetrated into the Bering Sea with the East Arctic cold waters. The
cold currents flowing from the Arctic kept close against the Asian coast of the Bering Sea probably not affecting
the coastal zone of Alaska. The existence of the Bering Strait in the cold glacial epochs of the Pleistocene, when
the sea level fell down to 100 m and lower, seems to be quite improbable. This is also confirmed by the higher
hypsometric and stratigraphic position of the morains of the mountain glaciers of East Kamchatka and
Chukotka with respect to the marine sediments. A strait with a southward current, directed oppositely to the
presently existing one, might probably have existed at the end of warm epochs, when the cooling increased, the
mountain glaciers activated, and the change in the climatic and hydrological environments in the Arctic and
North Pacific sectors of the ocean occurred. The principal reason for the penetration of the Arctic waters into
the Bering Sea probably lay in the origination of a southward inclination of the water surface in the strait region;
this inclination, in turn, resulted from the significant meridional pressure gradient over the adjacent parts of the
Chukchi and Bering seas.

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