Abstract:

The red soil is the most widely distributed Quaternary deposit in China, which contains a wealth of information on paleoclimate, paleogeography, and hominin evolution. However, because of the climatic conditions of high precipitation and warm temperature, which reduce the preservation of mammalian fossils and other dating materials, it is difficult to obtain precise stratigraphic ages in the red soil area. Magnetostratigraphy is a successful tool for dating both marine and terrestrial sediments. A series of magnetostratigraphic studies has been successfully conducted on the red soil sequences. This paper reviews magnetostratigraphic studies of the red soil sequences in southern China, some of which bear artifact stone tools. The red soils contain four magnetic minerals of goethite, maghemite, magnetite and hematite. Magnetite and hematite were identified as the main carriers of the characteristic remnant magnetizations. Paleomagnetic findings suggest that the red soil sequences in southern China span a period from the late Matuyama reverse chron to the earlymiddle Brunhes normal chron, and that the sequences began to accumulate no later than the Jaramillo age (that is, ca. 11 Ma). The magnetostratigraphies have significantly refined the chronology of the terrestrial red soil sequences in subtropical southern China, thus providing a robust chronological framework for deciphering Quaternary paleoenvironmental processes and probing early human evolution in subtropical eastern Old World.

Key words:  red soil, magnetostratigraphy, mineral magnetism, Quaternary