0000000000212716

AUTHOR

Axel Munnecke

Osmium and lithium isotope evidence for weathering feedbacks linked to orbitally paced organic carbon burial and Silurian glaciations

Abstract The Ordovician (∼487 to 443 Ma) ended with the formation of extensive Southern Hemisphere ice sheets, known as the Hirnantian glaciation, and the second largest mass extinction in Earth History. It was followed by the Silurian (∼443 to 419 Ma), one of the most climatically unstable periods of the Phanerozoic as evidenced by several large scale ( > 5 ‰ ) carbon isotope (δ13C) perturbations associated with further extinction events. Despite several decades of research, the cause of these environmental instabilities remains enigmatic. Here, we provide osmium (187Os/188Os) and lithium (δ7Li) isotope measurements of marine sedimentary rocks that cover four Silurian δ13C excursions. Osmi…

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Facies from Palaeozoic reefs and bioaccumulations.

341 pages

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Palaeozoic Reefs and Bioaccumulations: Climatic and Evolutionary Controls.

291 pages

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Fabric transitions from shell accumulations to reefs: an introduction with Palaeozoic examples

One unresolved conceptual problem in some Palaeozoic sedimentary strata is the boundary between the concepts of ‘shell concentration’ and ‘reef’. In fact, numerous bioclastic strata are transitional coquina–reef deposits, because either distinct frame-building skeletons are not commonly preserved in growth position, or skeletal remains are episodically encrusted by ‘stabilizer’ (reef-like) organisms, such as calcareous and problematic algae, encrusting microbes, bryozoans, foraminifers and sponges. The term ‘parabiostrome’, coined by Kershaw, can be used to describe some stratiform bioclastic deposits formed through the growth and destruction, by fair-weather wave and storm wave action, of …

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Fabric transitions from shell accumulations to reefs: an introduction with Palaeozoic examples.

16 pages

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