Paleoclimate and extensional tectonics of short-lived lacustrine environments. Lower Cretaceous of the Panormide Southern Tethyan carbonate platform (NW Sicily)

Abstract

Subaerial erosion and continental sedimentation interbedded with shallow-water carbonates are unequivocal stratigraphic records to evaluate paleoenvironmental and paleoclimate evolution of emerged landmass. Stratigraphic analysis of the Cretaceous Monte Gallo section of the Mesozoic Panormide carbonate platform, in the northern side of the Palermo Mountains (NW Sicily) records a peculiar continentalderived clays that interrupted the shallow-water carbonate sedimentation. These clays rest, with lenticular geometries, above the tectonically-enhanced subaerial erosional unconformity of the Barremian-Lower Aptian Requienid limestones and are covered by the Upper Cretaceous Rudistid limestone. Sedimentological investigation combined with mineralogical and petrographic results reveal the occurrence of alkaline to saline lake clays deposition in pond-filling depositional environment recording stressed conditions (evaporation) especially in its final living phase. They were formed when a half graben/tilted-block tectonics produced footwall uplift of the Gallo faulted-blocks carbonate platform. Paleoclimate evaluations of the continental-derived clays highlighted that a period of warm-humid conditions, which favoured their formation, interrupted the uniform warm climate conditions highlighting a greenhouse climate phase.