Stratigraphy of recent deep-sea sediments based upon foraminiferal fauna
Stratigraphy is the fundament for the establishment and clarification of numerous questions in geology. The problem of the stratification of fossil sediments played a decisive role in the past, and continues to do so today. If one wishes to gain insight r
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Stratigraphy of recent deep-sea sediments based upon foraminiferal fauna Geol Rundsch 29:330-333
Translation received: 4 March 2002 © Springer-Verlag 2002
Stratigraphy is the fundament for the establishment and clarification of numerous questions in geology. The problem of the stratification of fossil sediments played a decisive role in the past, and continues to do so today. If one wishes to gain insight regarding the nature of the formation of today's deposits, and avoid serious errors in the comparison of the same, one must, of necessity, first concern oneself with the sequence of recent sediment layers. The German South Polar Expedition's geologist, E. Philippi, was the first to thoroughly pursue the problem of stratification, something that initially appeared to present no difficulty, as stratification amongst recent deep-sea deposits had long been refuted, following the first meager ocean-floor sampies. After, however, larger ocean-floor cross sections from various parts of the oceans had become available, it was recognized that foraminifer-rich, calciferous Globigerina Clay was overlying the carbonate-poor, or even non-calcareous Red Deep Sea Clay in various sampies, a definitive petrographic stratification. Moreover, among petrographically uniform ocean-floor sampies, a reduction in the carbonate content in deeper regions was ascertained, as weil as a vertical change in the foraminiferal fauna of long Globigerina Clay sampies by Philippi. These observations, which appeared to have regional importance, applied, however, mainly to fairly scattered sites. A continuous stratigraphical subdivision of deepShort report on the lecture given at the assembly of the Geological Association at Frankfurt a. M. on 8th January 1938 by Wolfgang Schott (Berlin, currently at Hannover). Translated by C.l. Adamson and l. Schönfeld c.J. Adamson Jungfernstieg 3, Kiel, Germany J. Schänfeld (~) GEOMAR Research Center for Marine Geosciences, Wischhofstr. 1-3, Kiel, Germany e-mail: [email protected] Tel.: +49-431-6002315, Fax: +49-431-6002926
W.-C. Dullo (ed.), Milestones in Geosciences © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003
sea sediments, based on their fossil content, was not available, and it had not yet been proven that such a regional stratification as that witnessed among fossil sediments, in spite of the observations above, actually existed. Given the extensiveness of the ocean-floor sampie material extracted in the equatorial region of the Atlantic Ocean by Prof. C.W. Correns on board the survey-ship Meteor (of the German Atlantic Expedition), it appeared appropriate to once again examine these questions more closely, and, above all, to attempt to establish continuous stratigraphic units in the recent deep-sea sediments. Pelagic foraminifers, i.e., foraminifers living planktonically in the surface waters of the oceans, were used for these investigations, as they and their calcareous shells represent, so to speak, the main fossil types of today's deep-sea deposits. In order to be able to compare the compositions 01'
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