Les formations marines et continentales intervolcaniques des îles Canaries orientales (Grande Canarie. Fuerteventura et Lanzarote): Stratigraphie et signiflcation paleoclimatique.

Abstract

More than 20 m. y. of continuous activity in the Canary Islands have brought about the fossilization of marine fauna and soils which prove the existence of alternating warm and numid conditions of guinean origen, and also of drier influences from the Sahara, connected with the arrival of cold waters from the Lusitanian Sea. The sea deposits of the lower Pleistocene with Strombus coronatus and those of the upper Pleistocene with Strombus bubonius, which are caracteristically warm and the deposits of middle and upper Pleistoeene and of the Holocene, with various species of Patella and caracteristically cold (Meco, 1977), have already been related to volcanic activities dated by K/Ar (Meco y Steams, 1981) and are new being related to rapid effects of soil formation, the result of evaporation an clayey neoformation of volcanic materials which are constantly being renoved. The fairly rapid fossilization caused by volcanic activity, eliminates some of the effects accumulated over a period of time on the paleosoils, The existence of Saharian quartz, a mineral not found in volcanic products, and the simultaneous existence of more distant matters on the evolution of soilformation, like crusts which contain gypsum or attapulgyte of desert origin and bauxites containing nickel and tale of tropical, humid origin (Pomel, 1985), all this permit to find coherents conclusions.