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Balkhania balkhanica Mamontova, 1966 (benthic foraminifera) and Kopetdagaria sphaerica Maslov, 1960 (dasycladalean alga) from the Lower Cretaceous Tirgan Formation of the Kopet Dagh mountain range (NE Iran) and their paleobiogeographic significance

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Abstract

The poorly known larger benthic foraminifer Balkhania balkhanica Mamontova is reported from the Tirgan Formation (Upper Barremian-Lower Aptian) in the northeastern part of Iran. It was so far only known from Iran (Kopet Dagh and Central Iran), Turkmenistan, and central Afghanistan. Obviously, B. balkhanica possessed a limited distributional area overlapping largely with that of the dasycladalean alga Kopetdagaria sphaerica Maslov (Turkmenistan, Iran, Georgia, Bulgaria, Romania), Conradella bakalovae (Conrad and Peybernès) (Tibet?, Georgia, Bulgaria, Romania), and other taxa. These taxa typify the so-called Carpatho-Pontic algal bioprovince sensu Bucur (2000), which is emended and replaced with the new name Carpatho-Cimmerian bioprovince being part of the former northern (= Eurasian) margin of the Neo-Tethys. The present case study provides a further example that the investigation of the distribution pattern of larger benthic foraminifera, together with dasycladalean green algae, may provide a useful proxy in paleotectonic and paleogeographic reconstructions of the Peri-Tethyan domain.

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Acknowledgments

Warm thanks to Prof. Gérard Stampfli (Genève) for providing the Aptian paleomap and for helping with the geographic localization/identification of occurrences. The authors would like to thank Ioan Bucur (Cluj-Napoca) and Bruno Granier (Brest) for providing original papers of Kopetdagaria sphaerica and Balkhania balkhanica. The reviewers Ioan Bucur (Cluj Napoca), Jean-Piere Masse (Marseille), and Markus Wilmsen (Dresden) are thanked for their detailed reviews.

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Taherpour Khalil Abad, M., Schlagintweit, F., Vaziri, S.H. et al. Balkhania balkhanica Mamontova, 1966 (benthic foraminifera) and Kopetdagaria sphaerica Maslov, 1960 (dasycladalean alga) from the Lower Cretaceous Tirgan Formation of the Kopet Dagh mountain range (NE Iran) and their paleobiogeographic significance. Facies 59, 267–285 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10347-012-0323-3

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