Reply to comment on González-Acebrón, L., Mas, R., Arribas, J., Gutiérrez-Mas, J.M., Pérez-Garrido, C. “Very coarse-grained beaches as a response to generalized sea level drops in a complex active tectonic setting: Pleistocene marine terraces at the Cadiz coast, SW Spain”

Abstract

A series of Pleistocene marine terraces comprised of conglomerate and coarse-grained sandstone aligned NNW-SSE along the Cadiz coast have been recognized and interpreted as formed in very coarse-grained beaches in our work (González-Acebrón et al., 2016). They unconformable overlie either Pliocene units or older Pleistocene deposits. In these terraces, five sedimentary sequences were described and dated by Sr isotopic analysis of well-preserved oysters. This dating provided an Early Pleistocene age (1.3 Ma) for the oldest marine terrace, which corresponds to Sequence 1. Aguirre (2018) does not agree with the dating of the first sequence. Instead, in Aguirre (1995) and Aguirre et al. (1995) these deposits are considered as laterally equivalent to lacustrine deposits located more than 50 km far away (Mesas de Asta, Jerez Basin), and their age (Late Pliocene-lowermost Early Pleistocene) extrapolated to Sequence 1. This is an impossible correlation given the fact that the studied deposits (Sequences 1 to 5) are marine terraces without lateral continuity inland. Finally, Aguirre's (2018) sedimentological interpretation of the deposits of Sequence 1 as part of a “wave- and tide-dominated delta” breaks down when one considers that this delta would be a mixture of non-coeval deposits (the continental deposits of Mesas de Asta together with Sequence 1 deposits).