Holocene coastal paleoenvironments in Atlantic Patagonia, Argentina

The Atlantic shoreline in Patagonia, southernmost South America, is a paraglacial coast that has undergone extensive erosion and retreat since the late Pleistocene, releasing a large volume of sand and gravel to southward littoral drift. Despite regional erosive conditions, accretionary landforms developed during the Holocene in three coastal reentrants. These are, from north to south along a 200 km long shoreline stretch: (1) the cuspate foreland that underlies Bustamante Point, in the Rı́o Gallegos Estuary; (2) the cuspate foreland with incipient spit underlying Dungeness Point, in the eastern Strait of Magellan; (3) the San Sebastián Bay tidal flat; and (4) the El Páramo Spit, partly enclosing the San Sebastián Bay. These accretionary landforms contain a record of relative sea level changes for approximately the past 7 ka, and indicate a tectonically driven drop of about 3 m during growth of Bustamante Point and of 1–2 m in the other areas. Differential sea level fall influenced development of the landforms, with slower rates favoring spit development in the south.