Controls on modern carbonate sedimentation on warm-temperate to arctic coasts, shelves and seamounts in the Northern Hemisphere: Implications for fossil counterparts

In contrast to the well studied tropical carbonate environments, interest in non-tropical carbonate deposition was rather low until the basic ideas of theForamol-concept were outlined byLees & Buller (1972). In the following two decades studies on non-tropical carbonate settings evolved as a new and exciting branch of carbonate sedimentology (seeNelson 1988). This is archieved in a great number of publications dealing on temperate carbonate deposits from numerous coastal and open shelf settings on both hemispheres. The existence of wide extended carbonate depositional systems and even reefal frameworks in Subarctic and Arctic seas which are in focus by our research group made it possible to…

The Malawi Rift and vertebrate paleobiogeography of the African Rift Valley

Sedimentary model and high-frequency cyclicity in a Mediterranean, shallow-shelf, temperate-carbonate environment (uppermost Miocene, Agua Amarga Basin, Southern Spain)

Uppermost Tortonian to lower Messinian temperate carbonates crop out in the Agua Amarga Basin (SE Spain). They consist of four units. The lower three units can be tentatively assigned to the lowstand systems tract of a fourth-order sequence, constituting in turn the lowstand (‘megatrough unit’), transgressive (‘breccia unit’) and highstand (‘bedded unit’) stages of a higher-order cycle. All these materials were deposited in a small pull-apart basin related to the sinistral Carboneras strike-slip fault system. The best represented is the bedded unit (up to 25 m thick), which consists of bioclastic, bryozoan/bivalve-dominated calcarenites/calcirudites with abundant fragments of echinoids, bar…

Oldest Homo and Pliocene biogeography of the Malawi Rift

The Malawi Rift and Pliocene palaeofaunas, which include a hominid mandible attributed to Homo rudolfensis, provide a biogeographical link between the better known Plio-Pleistocene faunal records of East and Southern Africa. The Malawi Rift is in a latitudinal position suitable for recording any hominid and faunal dispersion towards the Equator that was brought on by increased aridity of the Late Pliocene African landscape. The evidence suggests that Pliocene hominids originated in the eastern African tropical domain and dispersed to southern Africa only during more favourable ecological circumstances.

Normal vs. strike-slip faulting during rift development in East Africa: The Malawi rift

Kinematic analysis of Neogene and Quaternary faults demonstrates that the direction of extension in the Malawi rift rotated from east-northeast to southeast. Rift development commenced with the formation of half-grabens bounded by northwest-, north-, and northeast-striking normal faults. Owing to slightly oblique rifting, the northwest-striking faults in the northernmost rift segment show a small dextral oblique-slip component, whereas north- and northeast-oriented faults in the central part of the rift display a sinistral oblique-slip component. This first event resulted in block faulting and basin subsidence, which is largely responsible for the present-day basin morphology of Lake Malawi…

Nearshore, temperate, carbonate depositional systems (lower Tortonian, Agua Amarga Basin, southern Spain): implications for carbonate sequence stratigraphy

Abstract The bryozoan-rich lower Tortonian carbonates of the Agua Amarga Basin in southern Spain (Province of Almeria) provide an example of sediments formed in a nearshore, non-tropical depositional setting. Based on data derived from logging of sections and from field mapping, these lower Tortonian carbonates form a depositional sequence, which is subdivided into several depositional systems. A lowstand systems tract, which consists of volcaniclastic fan deltas and washover deposits, formed on the leeward side of a basement shoal which delimited the basin towards the south. A transgressive systems tract, which is characterised by a landward encroachment of deposits, is represented by subm…