Four hierarchical cyclothems, superbundlesets, bundlesets, bundles and laminae, have been identified from the Devonian Frasnian-Famennian carbonate strata in Guangxi, South China. Their hierarchical structures, ratio relationships and sequence in conodont zones are continuous and stable and can be traced across different facies zones and sedimentary basins. Our data show that hierarchically organized superbundlesets, bundlesets, bundles and laminae correspond to the long eccentricity, eccentricity, obliquity or precession and sub-Milankovitch cycles respectively. Their periods were 400,000, 100,000, 33,333, 16,667 and 8,000–17,000 a, respectively. The ratios of long eccentricity to eccentricity, eccentricity to obliquity, and eccentricity to precession in the Devonian are 1:4, 1:3 and 1:6 respectively. Using these hierarchical Milankovitch cyclothems, chronostratigraphical division and correlation can be realized at a resolution of 100 ka or 10 ka at the Frasnian-Famennian transition. The time intervals of the Upper rhenana Zone, linguiformis Zone, and the Lower, Middle and Upper triangularis Zone are 0.6, 0.8, 0.3, 0.3 and 0.3 Ma, respectively. Sea-level changes of the Frasnian-Famennian transition were not coherent and synchronous at the resolution of 100 ka or 10 ka in the basin-slope carbonate sequences of Guangxi, South China.
GONG Yiming Faculty of Earth Science, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, 430074LI Baohua Laboratory of Marine Geology, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092and WU Yi Guangxi Institute of Geology, Nanning 530023
Molecular stratigraphical, carbonate carbon isotopic, stratigraphical and paleontological data show that algal booming, eutrophication, anoxia, hypersalinity, positive δ13C excursion and biomass decreasing occurred in the offshore carbonate environments of the Frasnian-Famennian (F-F) transition, which hints that red tide might frequently take place in the F-F transition of Guangxi, South China. We suggest that the mass extinction of the reef ecosystems and the shallow-water marine organisms in the F-F transition of the lower-middle latitudes may be related to the frequent occurrence of red tide in that time.
Studies show positive shifts of inorganic and organic carbon isotope values (δ 13Ccarb and δ 13Ckerogen) from +0.43 (‰ V-PDB) to +3.54 (‰ V-PDB) and from ?29.38 (‰ V-PDB) to ?24.14 (‰ V-PDB), respectively, B* (Ba* = Ba/ (Al2O3 X 15%)) values from 0.015 to 0.144, TOC values from 0.02% to 0.21%, V/Cr values from 0.3 to 2.0, Sr/Ba values from 3.20 to 49.50 in the Late Devonian Frasnian Upper rhenana zone to the top linguiformis zone of the Yangdi sec-tion deposited in carbonate slope facies of Guilin, Guangxi, South China, which indicates that biomass, productivity, organic carbon burial and salinity increase and that oxygenation near the boundary between sediments and waters decreases from the Late Devonian Frasnian Upper rhenana zone to the top linguiformis zone. Abundance of molecular fossils increases and normal alkanes, isoprenoid hydrocarbon, terpanes and steranes are dominated from the Late Devonian Frasnian to the bottom of Famennian, which shows that the predecessors of molecular fossils of the Frasnian-Famennian (F-F) transition are dominated by marine phytoplankton, zooplankton and benthic bacteria with no photosynthesis. Therefore, it is considered that the F-F transitional mass extinction with a multistage, selection and global synchronizing was caused by bacte-rial-algal proliferating, continuing deterioration of the shallow marine ecoenvironment of the mid-dle-lower latitudes. A simple cause and effect chain can be expressed as: appearance of seed plants and multi-storied forests → enhanced chemical and biochemical weathering and pe-dogenesis → wide development of soils → increasing riverine nutrient fluxes in epicontinental sea → from superoligotrophic to eutrophic in epicontinental sea → proliferating of marine phyto-plankton and zooplankton → frequent red tide and anoxia → mass extinction of shallow marine organisms in the middle-lower latitudes. It is worth notice that the factor drawdown of atmos-pheric Pco2, climatic cooling and sea level falling caused by eutrophication,
GONG Yiming1,2, XU Ran1, TANG Zhongdao1, SI Yuanlan3 & LI Baohua4 1. Faculty of Earth Science and State Key Laboratory of Geological Processes and Mineral Resources, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074, China
