First report on dendrochronological and radiocarbon studies of subfossil driftwood recovered across the Mures ¸/Maros Alluvial Fan ZOLTÁN KERN 1 p , MÁTYÁS ÁRVAI 2 , PETRU URDEA 3 , FABIAN TIMOFTE 3 , ESZTER ANTALFI 4 , SÁNDOR FEHÉR 4 , TAMÁS BARTYIK 5 and GYÖRGY SIPOS 5 1 Institute for Geological and Geochemical Research, Research Centre for Astronomy and Earth Sciences, Eötvös Loránd Research Network, Budapest, Hungary 2 Institute for Soil Sciences, Centre for Agricultural Research, Eötvös Loránd Research Network, Budapest, Hungary 3 Department of Geography, West University of Timis ¸oara, Timis ¸oara, Romania 4 University of Sopron, Institute of Wood Technology and Technical Sciences, Sopron, Hungary 5 Department of Physical Geography and Geoinformatics, University of Szeged, Szeged, Hungary Received: November 4, 2021 • Accepted: December 21, 2021 ABSTRACT Visiting three gravel pits and three natural outcrops across the Mures ¸/Maros Alluvial Fan, 58 samples were collected from subfossil driftwood recovered from coarse-grained fluvial sediment layers, while no subfossil wood was found at three additional gravel pits. Dendrochronological and radiocarbon analysis of these relict wood can support the temporal extension of the regional dendrochronological reference datasets and their dating can provide a useful contribution to the reconstruction of the landscape evolution of the Mures ¸/Maros Alluvial Fan. The tree-ring widths of the subfossil samples were measured. Dendrochronological synchronization resulted in two oak chronologies which encompassed five, and two reliably cross-dated series covering 191 years (MURchr1) and 127 years (MURchr2), respectively. Based on the 14 C ages the subfossil driftwood material represents Middle and Late Holocene ages. The occasionally up to 6 m-thick fluvial sedi- ment covering relatively young, < 1000-yr-old wood, indicates intense accumulation at the apex of the Mures ¸/Maros Alluvial Fan, which explains the documented rapid and significant Holocene avulsions. KEYWORDS dendrochronology, fluvial process, Holocene, Hungary, oak, Romania, silver fir, 14 C ages INTRODUCTION Subfossil wood is non-petrified wood which has been preserved over hundreds or thousands of years in geologic environments (Kaennel and Schweingruber, 1995). Buried subfossil wooden remains were found in large quantities during the past decades in both natural and artificial excavations in the sediments laid by fluvial processes across East and Central Europe (Reinprecht et al., 1988; Becker, 1993; Kra ¸piec, 2001; Ge ¸bica and Kra ¸piec, 2009; Dzie- duszy nska et al., 2011; Kolá  r and Rybní  cek, 2011; Nechita et al., 2014; Vitas et al., 2014; Pearson et al., 2014; Kern and Popa, 2016; Árvai et al., 2018). With rare exceptions (e.g., Kázmér, 2008) these are late Quaternary remains. Studying these Holocene and Late Pleistocene remains helped the regional Quaternary dating efforts not only via the development of regional dendrochronological reference curves Central European Geology DOI: 10.1556/24.2021.00120 © 2021 The Author(s) RESEARCH ARTICLE p Corresponding author. Institute for Geological and Geochemical Research, Research Centre for Astronomy and Earth Sciences, Eötvös Loránd Research Network, Budaörsi út 45, H-1112, Budapest, Hungary. E-mail: zoltan.kern@gmail.com, kern@geochem.hu Unauthenticated | Downloaded 03/12/22 02:19 PM UTC