TY - JOUR

T1 - Deciphering the fragmentary nature of cretaceous shallow-water limestone archives

T2 - A case study from the subtropical apennine carbonate platform

AU - Schmitt, Katharina

AU - Heimhofer, Ulrich

AU - Frijia, Gianluca

AU - Di Lucia, Matteo

AU - Huck, Stefan

N1 - Funding information:. We thank Christiane Wenske (LUH) for laboratory assistance and Fritz-Lukas Stoepke (LUH) for thin-section preparation. Financial support from German Research Foundation (DFG) projects HU 2258/2-1186 (SH) and HE 4467/8-1 is gratefully acknowledged. We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their critical comments and constructive contributions.

PY - 2020/9/17

Y1 - 2020/9/17

N2 - Shallow-water carbonate platform sections are valuable archives for the reconstruction of deep-time environmental and climatic conditions, but the low resolution of biostratigraphic schemes associated with frequent sedimentary hiatuses often hampers their precise chronostratigraphic assignment. Moreover, chemostratigraphic correlation of shallow-water sections with well-dated pelagic successions is notoriously difficult and associated with large uncertainties, as shallow-water bulk carbonate archives are particularly prone to the impact of diagenesis. This study examines central Tethyan mid-Cretaceous carbonate platform deposits exposed in the Central Apennines (Italy) suffering several emersion phases, which cause sedimentary gaps of variable duration. The investigated sections (Santa Lucia, Monte La Costa) represent a transect through the Apennine Carbonate Platform, ranging from the lagoonal inner carbonate platform realm towards the platform margin. Although benthic foraminifera are at times scarce and the carbonates evidently suffered diagenetic alteration, high-resolution carbon isotope stratigraphy combined with (rudist and chondrodont shell) strontium isotope stratigraphy enables a correlation of the studied sections with pelagic composite reference curves. A detailed foraminiferal-algal biostratigraphic record of the studied shallow-water sections and their integration into high-resolution carbon and strontium isotope stratigraphy is presented. This approach allows precise estimates of the time lost in major sedimentary hiatuses, three of which were identified at the Santa Lucia locality. There, long-lasting hiatuses cover parts of the Early Aptian (3.2 Myr), the Late Aptian (3.3 Myr) and the Late Albian to Cenomanian (14.3 Myr), the latter being associated with formation of karst-filling bauxite. The documentation and dating of sedimentary hiatuses in the Apennine Carbonate Platform sector presented here is essential to correlate emersion phases observed in the peri-mediterranean region, in particular with respect to the mechanisms of their origin.

AB - Shallow-water carbonate platform sections are valuable archives for the reconstruction of deep-time environmental and climatic conditions, but the low resolution of biostratigraphic schemes associated with frequent sedimentary hiatuses often hampers their precise chronostratigraphic assignment. Moreover, chemostratigraphic correlation of shallow-water sections with well-dated pelagic successions is notoriously difficult and associated with large uncertainties, as shallow-water bulk carbonate archives are particularly prone to the impact of diagenesis. This study examines central Tethyan mid-Cretaceous carbonate platform deposits exposed in the Central Apennines (Italy) suffering several emersion phases, which cause sedimentary gaps of variable duration. The investigated sections (Santa Lucia, Monte La Costa) represent a transect through the Apennine Carbonate Platform, ranging from the lagoonal inner carbonate platform realm towards the platform margin. Although benthic foraminifera are at times scarce and the carbonates evidently suffered diagenetic alteration, high-resolution carbon isotope stratigraphy combined with (rudist and chondrodont shell) strontium isotope stratigraphy enables a correlation of the studied sections with pelagic composite reference curves. A detailed foraminiferal-algal biostratigraphic record of the studied shallow-water sections and their integration into high-resolution carbon and strontium isotope stratigraphy is presented. This approach allows precise estimates of the time lost in major sedimentary hiatuses, three of which were identified at the Santa Lucia locality. There, long-lasting hiatuses cover parts of the Early Aptian (3.2 Myr), the Late Aptian (3.3 Myr) and the Late Albian to Cenomanian (14.3 Myr), the latter being associated with formation of karst-filling bauxite. The documentation and dating of sedimentary hiatuses in the Apennine Carbonate Platform sector presented here is essential to correlate emersion phases observed in the peri-mediterranean region, in particular with respect to the mechanisms of their origin.

KW - Apennine carbonate platform

KW - Biostrati-graphy

KW - Chemostratigraphy

KW - Cretaceous

KW - Emersion

KW - Sedimentary gaps

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85097666189&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1127/nos/2019/0551

DO - 10.1127/nos/2019/0551

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85097666189

VL - 53

SP - 389

EP - 413

JO - Newsletters on Stratigraphy

JF - Newsletters on Stratigraphy

SN - 0078-0421

IS - 4

ER -