Caracteristicas petrograficas y datacion U/Th de una calcreta laminar quaternaria: implicaciones de la captura de la cuenca de Guadix-Baza por el rio Guadalquivir

The Guadix topographic depression is a Neogene-Quaternary basin located in the central sector of the Betic Cordillera at the boundary between the South Iberian margin and the Alboran domain. This topographic depression is a plateau with an average elevation of 1000 m in the northern limb of the Sierra Nevada range. The continental deposits infilling the Guadix basin span time from the late Tortonian to the Pleistocene, when a laminar calcrete developed on fine to coarse-grained fluvial and lacustrine deposits. Four coeval subsamples from the top laminae of the calcrete were collected and dated by the U/Th method. The resulting date is 42.6 ± 5.6 ka, which indicates the minimum age for the cessation of active sedimentation in the Guadix basin. We envisage the capture of the Pliocene-Pleistocene endorheic Guadix basin by the Guadalquivir River after 42 ka as the main factor triggering the formation of the present-day eroded landscape. After the capture, the combination of climatic (wet periods), lithological (soft and loose sediments), and topographic (high average altitude) features allowed the development of the present-day entrenched drainage pattern