Mineralogy and geochemistry of the main glauconite bed in the Middle Eocene of Texas: paleoenvironmental implications for the verdine facies.

The Main Glauconite Bed (MGB) is a pelleted greensand located at Stone City Bluff on the south bank of the Brazos River in Burleson County, Texas. It was deposited during the Middle Eocene regional transgression on the Texas Gulf Coastal Plain. Stratigraphically it lies in the upper Stone City Member, Crockett Formation, Claiborne Group. Its mineralogy and geochemistry were examined in detail, and verdine facies minerals, predominantly odinite, were identified. Few glauconitic minerals were found in the green pelleted sediments of the MGB. Without detailed mineralogical work, glaucony facies minerals and verdine facies minerals are easily mistaken for one another. Their distinction has value in assessing paleoenvironments. In this study, several analytical techniques were employed to assess the mineralogy. X-ray diffraction of oriented and un-oriented clay samples indicated a clay mixture dominated by 7 and 14Å diffraction peaks. Unit cell calculations from XRD data for MGB pellets match the odinite-1M data base. Electron microprobe analyses (EMPA) from the average of 31 data points from clay pellets accompanied with Mössbauer analyses were used to calculate the structural formula which is that of odinite: Fe(3+) 0.89 Mg0.45 Al0.67 Fe(2+) 0.30 Ti0.01 Mn0.01) Σ = 2.33 (Si1.77 Al0.23) O5.00 (OH)4.00. QEMSCAN (Quantitative Evaluation of Minerals by Scanning Electron Microscopy) data provided mineral maps of quantitative proportions of the constituent clays. The verdine facies is a clay mineral facies associated with shallow marine shelf and lagoonal environments at tropical latitudes with iron influx from nearby runoff. Its depositional environment is well documented in modern nearshore locations. Recognition of verdine facies clays as the dominant constituent of the MGB clay pellets, rather than glaucony facies clays, allows for a more precise assessment of paleoenvironmental conditions.

Fossil worm burrows reveal very early terrestrial animal activity and shed light on trophic resources after the end-cretaceous mass extinction.

The widespread mass extinctions at the end of the Cretaceous caused world-wide disruption of ecosystems, and faunal responses to the one-two punch of severe environmental perturbation and ecosystem collapse are still unclear. Here we report the discovery of in situ terrestrial fossil burrows from just above the impact-defined Cretaceous-Paleogene (K/Pg) boundary in southwestern North Dakota. The crisscrossing networks of horizontal burrows occur at the interface of a lignitic coal and silty sandstone, and reveal intense faunal activity within centimeters of the boundary clay. Estimated rates of sedimentation and coal formation suggest that the burrows were made less than ten thousand years after the end-Cretaceous impact. The burrow characteristics are most consistent with burrows of extant earthworms. Moreover, the burrowing and detritivorous habits of these annelids fit models that predict the trophic and sheltering lifestyles of terrestrial animals that survived the K/Pg extinction event. In turn, such detritus-eaters would have played a critical role in supporting secondary consumers. Thus, some of the carnivorous vertebrates that radiated after the K/Pg extinction may owe their evolutionary success to thriving populations of earthworms.

Chondrites: a trace fossil indicator of anoxia in sediments.

The trace fossil Chondrites, a highly branched burrow system of unknown endobenthic deposit feeders, occurs in all types of sediment, including those deposited under anaerobic conditions. In some cases, such as the Jurassic Posidonienschiefer Formation of Germany, Chondrites occurs in black, laminated, carbonaceous sediment that was deposited in chemically reducing conditions. In other cases, such as numerous oxic clastic and carbonate units throughout the geologic column, Chondrites typically represents the last trace fossil in a biotutbation sequence. This indicates that the burrow system was produced deep within the sediment in the anaerobic zone below the surficial oxidized zone that was characterized by freely circulating and oxidizing pore waters.

Graphoglyptid burrows in modern deep-sea sediment.

The complex, highly patterned, invertebrate burrow systems known as "graphoglyptids" in ancient sedimentary rocks have now been recovered in box cores of modern deep-sea sediment. Spiroraphe, Cosmoraphe, and Paleodictyon occur as grooves in the tops of washed cores, and they apparently were produced and maintained as horizontal tunnel systems just a few millimeters below the sediment surface. These burrows, which are important as indicators of deepwater sedimentary environments in ancient strata, have been predicted in the modern deep sea but have not been found there until now.