The Holocene. Even though sedimentary processes for instance hydrodynamic sorting and mechanical destruction throughout transport and weathering can fractionate heavy mineral assemblages, they’ve extended been utilised as efficient proxies of sediment DMPO Chemical provenance [9,10]. Various heavy mineral research happen to be carried out on possible provenance regions for the SOT [115]. Nonetheless, in the past, a particular size of 6325 was frequently chosen for heavy mineral evaluation, thereby reducing the particle size impact or the impact of hydrodynamic separation [16,17], after which reflecting as much as you possibly can the mineral composition with the river into the sea as well as the nature from the bearing rock [13,15]. On the other hand, earlier studies reported that the equivalent sedimentation impact could possibly lead to important differences within the composition of heavy minerals with diverse grain sizes inside the same sample. The narrower the grain size range, the far more substantial the distinction in the composition can be [9]. Meanwhile, it was thought of that the heavy minerals with a greater particular gravity are somewhat enriched inside the fine-grained elements [18]. Hence, if 6325 is chosen, the content material of heavy minerals within the variety 63 will be substantially underestimated. As a result, by expanding the particle size variety to conduct a additional extensive evaluation of the composition of heavy minerals, it truly is feasible to do away with the deviation of your mineral composition brought on by the difference inside the particle size choice [19]. Inside the southern Okinawa Trough, unlike the comprehensive application of geochemical and clay mineral indicators, handful of research have focused on the provenance significance of heavy minerals. Additionally, there have not been any reports on the assemblages of full-size, fraction heavy minerals within this region. Within this study, we report the full-size fraction heavy mineral assemblages from H4-S2, aiming to (1) reveal the heavy mineral assemblages traits of sediments within the SOT since the late Holocene; (two) to ascertain the provenance of sediments within the SOT because the late Holocene; (three) to propose a mineral index to get a provenance evaluation to distinguish the sediments from the Yangtze River, the East China Sea shelf, and Taiwan rivers; (4) to explore the applicability of TESCAN Integrated Mineral Analyzer (TIMA) strategy towards the study of heavy mineral assemblages of marine sediments. two. Materials and Techniques two.1. Components and Age Model The sediment core H4-S2 (477 cm in length, 122 37 19.702 E, 24 52 49.906 N) was situated on the SOT (Figure 1) having a water depth of 1505 m. This study focused on heavy mineral assemblages from 5 layers of H4-S2 (266 cm, 11252 cm, 19232 cm, 33272 cm, and 40242 cm). The age model was constructed on the basis information in the accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) 14 C dating of planktonic foraminifera picked from 6 layers (Figure two). The depositional age at 477 cm was 624a BP [20], with a sedimentation rate of 0.69 cm/yr. The depositional ages of five samples were established by the Bacon application package (version two.three.9.1) (Table 1) [21].Table 1. The depth, deposition ages, and heavy mineral Ziritaxestat Biological Activity Grains of five layers in H4-S2. Sample OTS-1 OTS-2 OTS-3 OTS-4 OTS-5 Depth (cm) 266 11252 19232 33272 40242 Deposition Ages (cal. yr AD) 1954993 1828879 1748793 1580641 1536544 Heavy Mineral Grains 97 425 634 240Minerals 2021, 11, x FOR PEER Overview Minerals 2021, 11, 1191 Minerals 2021, 11, x FOR PEER REVIEW3 of 11 three 11 three ofofFigure Map of the study area displaying the l.