The Late Neogene: Biostratigraphy, Geochronology and Paleoclimatology of the Last 15 Million Years in Marine and Continental Sequences

225 Pages·1974·3.58 MB·English

by  William A. Berggren and John A. van Couvering (Eds.)

THE LATE NEOGENE
BIOSTRATIGRAPHY, GEOCHRONOLOGY AND PALEOCLIMATOLOGY OF THE
LAST 15 MILLION YEARS IN MARINE AND CONTINENTAL SEQUENCES
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Developments in Palaeontology and Stratigraphy, 2
THE LATE NEOGENE
BIOSTRATIGRAPHY, GEOCHRONOLOGY
AND PALEOCLIMATOLOGY OF THE LAST
15 MILLION YEARS IN MARINE AND
CONTINENTAL SEQUENCES
by
William A. Berggren
Department of Geology and Geophysics, Woods Hole Oceanographic Insti tution, Woods
Hole, Mass., U.S.A., and
Department of Geology, Brown University, Providence, R.I., U.S.A.
and
John A. van Couvering
University of Colorado Museum, Boulder, Colo., U.S.A.
Reprinted from Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology,
Vol. 16 No. 1 / 2
ELSEVIER SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHING COMPANY
Amsterdam Oxford New York 1974
ELSEVIER SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHING COMPANY
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CARD NUMBER: 74-10257
ISBN 0-444-41246-8
WITH 16 ILLUSTRATIONS AND 12 TABLES
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AMSTERDAM
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PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS
To the memory of Professor Orville Lee Bandy (19 1 6-1 973)
friend, colleague, antagonist,
but above all gentleman
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Hipparion (a 3-toed horse) with Globigerina nepenthes Todd (a planktonic foraminifer) in
his jaws. The initial appearance of these two forms has been radiometrically dated at about
12-12.5 m.y. ago and symbolizes the correlation between marine and continental bio-
stratigraphic events and their calibration to a biochronologic time-scale discussed in this
study.
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FOREWORD
The attainment of ever more precise correlation is the main goal of
stratigraphical geology. Subdivision of geological time, as represented in the
sedimentary rock record, has occupied the talents and tested the ingenuity of
geologists for over two centuries, if we take the work of William Smith as the
first significant contribution in this respect. The ability to recognize and
distinguish smaller and smaller units of time by biostratigraphical methods is a
tribute to an increased understanding of evolutionary patterns, improved
instrumentation, and a growing body of informative, descriptive and inter-
pretative literature.
Within the space of the last thirty years we have witnessed the development
of a more refined zonation of Cenozoic marine biostratigraphy using the
planktonic Foraminifera. This work, origiiially begun in the Soviet Union in
the 1930’s, was later expanded to the Caribbean region, primarily by oil com-
pany paleontologists. The information obtained by specialists in various
regions lay fallow for many years, but with the recent increase in communica-
tion between specialists in all parts of the world, we have seen in the past ten
years greater advances in intercontinental zonation and correlation of the
Cenozoic biostratigraphy of planktonic Foraminifera than in the preceding
thirty. These more recent advances have gone foreward at the same time
with the formulation of zonation schemes based on calcareous nannoplankton,
radiolarians and diatoms, three other groups of microplankton which are
increasingly useful in regional biostratigraphic correlation. More or less simul-
taneously, studies of “micro-”mammals in the Cenozoic of Europe have
brought about remarkable advances in continental biostratigraphy.
Recent advances in geophysics have also had a strong influence on
paleontology. Paleomagnetism has aided in the reconstruction of past paleo-
geographies (and attendant paleolatitudes) and thus provided a framework for
the interpretation of distribution patterns of fossil life forms as well as under-
standing past climatic history of the earth. Of particular importance has been
the influence of the Late Neogene paleomagnetic polarity reversal time-scale
whereby biostratigraphic horizons and/or zones can be calibrated to the
ordinal time-scale with a high degree of accuracy. Furthermore, the Neogene
approximates that part of geological history in which the biological record
itself can be calibrated by radiometric dates having a confidence interval less
than the life span of an average species (0.1-1.0 m.y.). Such calibrations ap-
pear to justify the use of biochronological “datum” events - changes in the
fossil record with extraordinary geographical limits - in correlating both land
mammal and marine microplanktonic successions in different species assem-
blage contexts, and in evaluating the synchroneity of successions which have
evolved in parallel with occasional exchanges.