Reliability of lunar orbital periods extracted from ancient cyclic tidal rhythmites

Abstract

Ancient tidal periods extracted from the geologic record are useful to constrain and calibrate theoretical models of the evolution of the earth-moon system. Analysis of rocks that contain such tidal periodicities, termed cyclic rhythmites, have tended to concentrate on long series and have focused on the more obvious periods. For example, neap-spring periods have been the most widely discussed; such information can be reliably extracted from bedform thickness series measured within laterally accreted tidal bundles and vertically accreted tidal laminae. Other lunar orbital data is also encoded in cyclic rhythmites; however this additional information has been much less extensively applied to earth-moon models. Herein, short segments of well-formed cyclic rhythmites are examined to determine how reliably the various tidal periods can be extracted via harmonic analysis. Rhythmite series analyzed here exhibit well-formed neap-spring tidal periods and also exhibit a prominent fortnightly inequality or a variation in the height of successive spring tides. This inequality is related to the elliptical nature of the lunar orbit (anomalistic month) and it is demonstrated that this period can also be reliably extracted from cyclic rhythmites. Tropical periods, which reflect the changing lunar declination that occurs during a tropical month, have also been reported from cyclic rhythmites. Unlike synodic and anomalistic periods, the apparent tropical periods extracted from some cyclic rhythmites do not always accurately correspond to the expected values. In only a few cases can this period be reliably extracted from short segments of cyclic tidal-rhythmite data. This period is commonly only poorly encoded in rhythmites because: (1) it tends to be masked by higher amplitude synodic periods, and (2) it is not well expressed within predominantly semidiurnal tidal systems. Samples selected from the Proterozoic and Phanerozoic tend to be more common during specific intervals of geologic time. These intervals were characterized by glacio-eustatic flux and, in some cases, by unique continental configurations. Understanding these basic controls on rhythmite occurrences should aid in the discovery of additional examples.