Improving shallow-water carbonate chemostratigraphy by means of rudist bivalve sclerochemistry

Deep-time shallow-marine carbonate platforms record distinct biotic responses to climatic and environmental stressors. Unfortunately, precise temporal assignment of these biotic responses is often problematical due to poor biostratigraphic control and/or a significant diagenetic overprint of the neritic bulk carbonate chemostratigraphic inventory. An accurate stratigraphic framework is essential to better understand the causal relation between biotic events recorded by carbonate platforms and environmental changes that, for instance, culminated in mass extinction events or prolonged episodes of oceanic anoxia. Here we provide an integrated carbon and strontium-isotope stratigraphy of the Early Cretaceous subtropical Provence carbonate platform in SE France that is based solely on pristine low-Mg calcite from rudist bivalves. Carbon-isotope data of geochemically screened rudist fragments enabled reconstruction of a characteristic Barremian pattern including the Mid-Barremian Event (MBE) that allowed for a precise correlation with stratigraphically well-constrained Tethyan shallow-water and hemipelagic reference sections. In order to evaluate ontogenetic carbon-isotope changes and the overall variability of the shell-derived carbon-isotope data, numerous sclerochronological carbon-isotope profiles of individual large rudist shells are presented. Strontium-isotope stratigraphy supports the carbon-isotope-based age of the studied sections, but also provides unequivocal evidence for a major hiatus in the depositional record covering large parts of the Late Barremian. In contrast to biostratigraphic and bulk carbonate chemostratigraphic archives, the here established chronostratigraphy of carbonate platform evolution in the southern Provence region demonstrates a twofold resurgence of rudist-rich carbonate platform production during the Early Aptian and arguably the latest Early Aptian.