Upslope-climbing shelf-edge clinoforms and the stepwise evolution of the northern European glaciation (lower Pleistocene Eridanos Delta system, U.K. North Sea): When sediment supply overwhelms accommodation

Clinoforms are basinward-dipping and accreting palaeo-bathymetric profiles that record palaeo-environmental conditions and processes; thus, clinothems represent natural palaeo-archives. Here, we document shelf-edge scale clinoform sets which prograded through the entire width of an epicontinental marine basin (ca. 400 km), eventually encroaching onto the opposite basin flank, where they started to prograde upslope and landward, in defiance of gravity (“upslope-climbing clinoforms”). The giant westward-prograding Eridanos muddy shelf-edge clinothem originated from the Baltic hinterland in the Oligocene and achieved maximum regression in the Early Pleistocene, on the UK Central Graben (CG) and Mid North Sea High (MNSH), after crossing the whole North Sea mesopelagic depocentre and causing near complete basin infill. Here we integrate well and seismic data through the MNSH and CG and examine the Eridanos final heyday and demise, identifying five clinothem complexes (A1, A2, A3, B and C) and six depositional sequence boundaries (SB1 to SB6) in the Miocene-Recent section. Tectonic and climatic events drove the recent evolution of this system. Early Pleistocene climate cooling, in particular, resulted in a stepwise increase in sediment supply. This climaxed in the earliest Calabrian, following a likely Eburonian eustatic fall (=SB3) when the Eridanos clastic wedge was restructured from a 100–300 m thick compound shelf-edge and delta system to a “hybrid” shelf-edge delta at sequence boundary SB3 (ca. 1.75 Ma). In the ca. 40 kyr that followed SB3, a progradation rate peak (>1,000 m/kyr) is associated with clinoforms starting to accrete upslope, onto the east-dipping slope between CG and MNSH. This “upslope-climbing clinoform” phase was quickly followed by the maximum regression and final retreat of the Eridanos system in the Early Calabrian (=SB4), likely as the result of climate-driven changes in the Baltic hinterland and/or delta auto-retreat. To our knowledge, this contributions represents the first documentation of “upslope-climbing clinoforms” recorded in the stratigraphic record.