A shift in heavy and clay mineral provenance indicates a middle Miocene onset of a perennial sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean

During the Arctic Coring Expedition (ACEX), a 428-m-thick sequence of Upper Cretaceous to Quaternary sediments was penetrated. The mineralogical composition of the upper 300 m of this sequence is presented here for the first time. Heavy and clay mineral associations indicate a major and consistent shift in provenance, from the Barents-Kara-western Laptev Sea region, characterized by presence of common clinopyroxene, to the eastern Laptev-East Siberian seas in the upper part of the section, characterized by common hornblende (amphibole). Sea ice originating from the latter source region must have survived at least one summer melt cycle in order to reach the ACEX drill site, if considering modern sea ice trajectories and velocities. This shift in mineral assemblages probably represents the onset of a perennial sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean, which occurred at about 13 Ma, thus suggesting a coeval freeze in the Arctic and Antarctic regions.