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Foraminifera diversity changes and paleoenvironmental analysis: the Lower Cretaceous shallow-water carbonates of San Lorenzello, Campanian Apennines, southern Italy

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Abstract

A high-resolution stratigraphic study, carried out on the carbonate platform strata of the San Lorenzello section (Matese Mountains, southern Italy), Valanginian–Hauterivian in age, has allowed to: recognise lithofacies and their associations; assign the lithofacies associations to specific environments and individuate early meteoric diagenetic modifications, recurring at specific horizons. In this frame the vertical variation of benthic foram diversity has been analysed. On the whole, foraminiferal genera diversity decreases from open to restricted marine environments. Moreover, a climatic control on carbonate sedimentation is suggested by a Milankovitch cyclicity organised in elementary cycles, bundles and superbundles as well as by diagenetic characteristics testifying that humid and arid conditions alternated during the Early Cretaceous times. The orbital cyclicity is also documented by foraminiferal diversity changes, even if some discrepancies between the lithofacies and the diversity locally occur. Therefore, the above diversity changes do not appear to provide sufficient information for the sequence-stratigraphic interpretation of shallow-water carbonates.

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Acknowledgements

Financial support for field and laboratory studies was supported by Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Università “Federico II”, Naples, Italy, and by IAMC, Geomare, CNR, Naples, Italy. This study evolved from a part of my unpublished Ph.D. Thesis. I am sincerely grateful to Prof. Bruno D'Argenio and Prof. Vittoria Ferreri for their advices, teaching and fruitful discussions during the course of this work and for their constructive comments on the manuscripts. I thank André Strasser and Helmut Weissert for suggestions on the first draft of this manuscript and the reviewers Maria Mutti and Ioan I. Bucur who helped me to improve this paper

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  1. Istituto per l'Ambiente Marino Costiero (IAMC), Geomare, CNR, Calata Porta di Massa, Porto di Napoli, 80133, Napoli, Italy

    Sabrina Amodio

  2. Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Università degli Studi “Federico II”, Largo San Marcellino 10, 80138, Napoli, Italy

    Sabrina Amodio

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Amodio, S. Foraminifera diversity changes and paleoenvironmental analysis: the Lower Cretaceous shallow-water carbonates of San Lorenzello, Campanian Apennines, southern Italy. Facies 52, 53–67 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10347-005-0019-z

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