Shallow
water benthic communities at the Middle-Upper Eocene boundarySouthern and north-eastern Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary
Shallow
water benthic communities at the Middle-Upper Eocene boundary
Southern and north-eastern Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary
The 5th meeting of the UNESCO/IGCP 393 "Neritic
Events at the Middle-Upper Eocene boundary" (leader of the project
Esmeralda Caus, Universidad Autonoma of Barcelona, Spain) took place in Italy,
Slovenia, Croatia, and Hungary from July 18th to 31th, 2000. These periodic
meetings (every year) were initiated in Basel (Switzerland) in 1996.
The scientific session, organised by Carmela
Loriga Broglio and Davide Bassi (University of Ferrara), was held in Ferrara on
21th-22th July at the Dipartimento di Scienze Geologiche e Paleontologiche of
the University with two days of oral and poster communications focusing on
recent results concerning the Middle-Upper Eocene fossil assemblages from
Europe, Jamaica and Japan. The Museo Civico di Storia Naturale of Ferrara (Enrico
Trevisani, responsible) is editing in the Annali del Museo the abstracts
corresponding to the oral presentations and to the posters.
Three main
field trips were organised before and after the indoor meeting. A well
documented field trip guidebook ("Shallow water benthic communities at the
Middle-Upper Eocene boundary. Southern and north-eastern Italy, Slovenia,
Croatia, Hungary", Davide Bassi ed., in press by the Annali
dell'Università di Ferrara) describes all the localities visited and provides
an account on the local stratigraphy and on the regional geology.
The pre-meeting excursion (18th July; responsible
Filippo Barattolo, University of Naples) focused on the Spirolina Facies
of the Trentinara Formation (Late Paleocene-Lutetian) in the Southern Apennines.
Three post-meeting field trips followed the indoor meeting. The participants of
the three-days field trip (23th-25th July) in the Vicenza province visited
Mossano (the Priabonian parastratotype located in the Colli Berici), Priabona
(the Priabonian stratotype, located in the Monti Lessini), the Middle-Upper
Eocene boundary outcropping at Pradipaldo (Altopiano di Asiago), and the Late
Eocene of Possagno (southern Monte Grappa). The organisers of the field trips
were D. Bassi (Univ. Ferrara); Giampietro Braga, Bruno Bizzotto, and Paolo
Mietto (Univ. Padova); Cesare Papazzoni (Univ. Modena); Enrico Trevisani (Museo
di Civico di Storia Naturale of Ferrara). On 24th July the review and discussion
session of the meeting was held at the Museo Naturalistico Archeologico of Santa
Corona in Vicenza.
The third field trip (25th-28th July) was devoted
to the Priabonian successions of Povlak, Sustarica, Visnjica ,and Ravna Gora in
Slovenia and Croatia (responsible Katica Drobne). The fourth excursion took
place in Hungary (28th-31th July; responsible Gyorgy Less) where the
participants visited the Middle-Upper Eocene successions of Ajka, Urhida,
Calvari Hill area, Buda, Kisgyor, Miskolc, and Csokas.
The work
during the indoor meeting and the review and discussion session was fairly dense
because the firm goal of the research group is to define the shallow water
benthic chronostratigraphical subdivisions at the Bartonian-Priabonian boundary.
The data collected from several key localities during the last four years will
provide fundamental information about the biostratigraphy of this period by
focusing on the high-resolution biostratigraphy based on relevant shallow water
index taxa at species level. This means to study the index taxa by oriented
sections and by comparing the parameters of their inner morphology at standard
enlargements. One of the aims of the research group is to work out a modern
palaeontological overview over a considerable taxonomic spectrum. The results of
the project will be presented during the "Forams 2002" meeting which
will take place in Perth (Australia, Febr. 3-17, 2002).
Davide
Bassi
Secretary of the 5th IGCP 393 meeting