Sedimentary Records of Early Permian Major Glacial Sea-Level Falls in Southern Guizhou Province, China

As is well-known, the waxing and waning of the Gondwanan ice sheet contributed to high-frequency glacioeustatic sea 1eve1 fluctuations and widely distributed cyc1othems in the1ow-1atitudes during the Carboniferous-Permian Period. Recent inves- tigations suggest that the Permo-Carboniferous Ice Age is composed of a series of distinct episodes of glaciation and interglacia- tion.It has been confirmed thc glaciocustatic sca-level changes controlled thc high ircqucncy and1ow amplitudc sca-level changcs in South China during the Carboniferous-Permian Period, but the high amplitude sealeve1 fa11s still needs further exploration. Inthis paper we describe the characteristics of paleokarst in the Early Permian in Iongyin and Bianping sections at south Guizhou, including solution-collapse breccias and related sedimentary structures, which correlate in time with the two major sealevel fa11s in the Early Permian. This study could facilitate our understanding on the evolution of the Early Permian Palaeo- geography of South China.