Correlation of Silurian bentonites based on the immobile elements in the East Baltic and Scandinavia

Abstract This article presents a dataset of geochemical analyses from Silurian altered volcanic ash beds (bentonites) characterising 132 eruptions and preserved in sedimentary sections of the East Baltic area. TiO2, Nb, Zr, Th, Y, Ce, Cr and V ratios with Al2O3 are used for identifying correlations between ash beds from Scandinavian sections. Some correlated ash beds are illustrated by schematic maps of areal distribution indicating volcanic sources from directions of both Iapetus and Rheic palaeo-ocean margins. Keywords: K-bentonitesXRFvolcanic ashcorrelationsSilurianEast BalticScandinavia Acknowledgements This study is a contribution to IGCP591, Estonian Science Foundation project no. 8963 and the Estonian Research Council projects SF0140016s09 and ERMAS. Sigitas Radzevičius thanks the Science Council of Lithuania (No. MIP-034/2012). The authors thank Saima Peetermann for correction of language, R. Batchelor and an anonymous reviewer for useful comments.