Were rhyolitic glasses in the Vedde Ash and in the North Atlantic's Ash Zone 1 produced by the same volcanic eruption?

New evidence from North Atlantic deep-sea sediment cores suggests that rhyo litic glass shards in Ash Zone 1 and in the Vedde Ash may not have been pro duced by the same eruption as has been widely assumed. Our argument is base d on (1) a marine ice-rafted deposit approximately 1000 years older than th e Vedde Ash contains rhyolitic shards with the same major element chemistry as the Vedde Ash itself and (2) coincidence of Ash Zone 1 with an abrupt i ncrease in discharge of glacial icebergs into the North Atlantic. Hence, we cannot rule out the possibility that Vedde-like rhyolitic glasses were eru pted onto Icelandic glaciers before eruption of the Vedde Ash, stored in th e glacial ice, then dispersed by icebergs into the North Atlantic and depos ited partly or entirely as Ash Zone 1. While not disproving that Ash Zone 1 and the Vedde Ash came from the same eruption, our findings indicate that further study is needed to establish the exact relation between the two ash deposits. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.