Abstract
Studies carried out on Upper Cretaceous rudist-bearing carbonate sequences in the central-southern Apennines highlighted two main depositional settings characterized by different hydrodynamic behaviour: high-energy vs. low-energy settings. The purpose of the present paper is to provide an overview of the lithofacies and of the depositional geometries of Upper Cretaceous rudist-bearing limestones pertaining to the central-southern Apenninic carbonate successions, in which low-energy to intermittently perturbed conditions can be recognized.
The depositional sites were characterized by a large-scale facies polarity. Under closer examination, a patchy distribution of the latter appears, often related to channelized systems or current pathways through rudist settlement areas. The resulting depositional successions are characterized by peloidal silty-muddy sediments with periodical intercalations of fundamentally porous, coarse bioclastic deposits, in a generally tabular stacking. These geometries appear of great interest in relation to the prediction of geometries and porosities of the coarse-grained sedimentary bodies that intercalate and/or laterally pass to fine-grained deposits.
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Carannante, G., Ruberti, D., Simone, L. (2003). Sedimentological and Taphonomic Characterization of Low-Energy Rudist-Dominated Senonian Carbonate Shelves (Southern Apennines, Italy). In: Gili, E., El Hédi Negra, M., Skelton, P.W. (eds) North African Cretaceous Carbonate Platform Systems. NATO Science Series, vol 28. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0015-4_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0015-4_11
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