Abstract
Abstract. The proprietary palynological zonation developed by Shell U.K. Exploration and Production for the Paleocene of the North Sea Basin is formally released and described. Four main zones - in ascending order PT11, PT13, PT15 and PT19 - can be consistently recognised basin-wide from microplankton assemblages. The zonation for the central North Sea provides a further fourfold, mainly pollen-based, subdivision - PT19.1, PT19.2, PT19.3 and PT19.4 - of the prospective Forties Formation. Changes in climate may be considered a major influence over quantitative shifts in the Late Paleocene pollen spectrum and so it is reasonable to assume that such shifts may represent ‘time-lines’; hence the subzones may be valid over a much wider area than the central North Sea.
Highlights
Palynological investigations soon concentrated on those intervals deposited under restricted marine conditions unfavourable for foraminifera, radiolaria, diatoms, ostracods and calcareous nannoplankton
Zone PT19 was extensively studied by palynologists to establish a chronostratigraphic framework for the prospective Forties Formation
Impeded water circulation in the North Sea Basin during the Late Paleocene resulted from the basin’s isolation (Ziegler, 1990); the only communication was with the Norwegian-Greenland Sea
Summary
Only the initially selected marker types were consistentlylogged during the past twenty years, as a result of which no detailed record of the accompanying flora is available. The former has a predominantly deltaic (occasionally even lacustrine) to shallow marine setting (Ziegler, 1990)whilst in the latter area it ranges from slope deposits to deep marine basinal sequences with submarine fan deposits sourced from the northwest (Kulpecz & van Geuns, 1990) Despite this contrast, the pollen and spore floras appear similar in both taxa and quantitative composition as a result of common vegetational parentage and of drainage into the same near-enclosed marine basin in which there was good mixing prior to deposition and burial. Pollen Alnipollentitesuerus (Potonib)Potonie, 1934 Bombacacidites reticulatus Krutzsch, 1961 Caryapollenites spp.
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