During the latest Glacio-Eustatic cycle, the late Wisconsin Mississippi River to the

abyssal fan of North America served as one of Earth’s major sediment-routing networks. Abyssal
fans or deep sea fans are geological structures formed by turbidity currents and are characterized
by large sediment depositions. In response to the erosion of orogenic belts, the evolution of
continental margins, and climate change, these fans contain a record of sediment flux from land
to sea. Usually these fans are complemented by large drainage systems. Although the reaction of
such drainage system on immediate climate change is an unknown factor, they still help in
understanding such land to sea sediment changes and climate feedback. The ancestral
Mississippi system, formed by the deposition of sediments in a pre-existing basin, was a result of
late Pleistocene sediment production. In order to comprehend this phenomenon along with the
dispersal related to this system, A. Fildani, M.P. McKay, D. Stockli, J. Clark, M.L. Dykstra, L.
Stockli, and A.M. Hessler conducted a series of studies by sampling late Wisconsin abyssal fan
channel-fill and lobe deposits for detrital zircon U-Pb and (U-Th)/He double-dating analyses
(479). These samples were collected from medium to upper fine sands of Deep Sea Drilling
Project cores of the distal fan and the middle fan channel (479). A sand sample PC-29 was
collected from a U.S. Geological Survey piston core in the intermediate northern sub-lobe of the
youngest outer-fan lobe (479). As a result of these studies, a larger transfer of the sediments from
Cordilleran magmatic provinces and the Canadian Shield was found during the Pleistocene
period in comparison to the modern times. This shows that there was a more efficient and
dispersal of the terrigenous sediments, nutrients and solutes in the deep sea during the late
Pleistocene period in the ancestral system making the catchment more expansive and erosive.
High-discharge meltwater and glacial-lake outbursts during ice retreat was seen to be ways of
such effective dispersal.