Aptian‐Albian sea level history from Guyots in the western Pacific

Abstract

Relative sea level fluctuations are an important control on patterns of sedimentation on continental margins and provide a valuable tool for regional correlations. One of the main objectives of combined Ocean Drilling Program Legs 143 and 144 was drilling the thick carbonate caps of a suite of seamounts, called guyots, scattered over the northwestern Pacific. The array of drowned Cretaceous banks includes four carbonate banks of Aptian‐Albian age. These particular carbonate banks display emergent surfaces if regional sea level falls faster than the rate of guyot subsidence, or intervals of condensed parasequences and well‐cemented peritidal crypto‐algal flats if the rate of sea level fall is slightly less than guyot subsidence. Rapid rises of sea level following these sequence boundaries are recorded as drowning of the emergent horizons or as pronounced deepening of facies. The cored lithologies and downhole geophysical and geochemical logs were used to identify depositional sequences and surfaces of exceptional shallowing or deepening. A combination of biostratigraphic datums, carbon and strontium isotope curves, relative magnitude of surfaces of emergence, relative thicknesses of depositional sequences, sea level events, and counts of upward shallowing cycles or parasequences were used to correlate sequences among the four sites. After compensating for thermal subsidence rates at each guyot, an identical pattern of major Aptian‐Albian eustatic sea level events is evident throughout this large portion of the Pacific Ocean. There are approximately 12 Aptian and 12 Albian significant sequence boundaries, of which a third were associated with major episodes of emergence. When these events are compared with Aptian‐Albian relative sea level changes observed in European shelf successions, the major sequence boundaries and transgressive surges can be easily correlated, and it appears that both regions also display the same number of minor events. Therefore we can apply the relative timing of these events from the thermal subsidence rates and parasequence counts of the Pacific banks to construct an improved scaling of the associated ammonite zones and biostratigraphic datums in the Aptian‐Albian interval.An electronic supplement of this material may be obtained on adiskette or via Anonymous FTP from KOSMOS.AGU.ORG (LOGINto AGU's FTP account using ANONYMOUS as the username andGUEST as the password. Go to the right directory by typing APEND.Diskette may be ordered from American Geophysical Union, 2000Florida Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20009, $15.00. Payment mustaccompany order.