Cyclic nature of lamination in the Tithonian Solnhofen Plattenkalk of southern Germany and its palaeoclimatic implications

Abstract

In the Tithonian Solnhofen Plattenkalk (Malm ζ 2) of southern Germany, layers of purely micritic limestone are rhythmically interbedded with ones of marly micritic limestone. It appears that this alternation was formed under control of the Tithonian orbital variations. The Fourier spectral analysis shows that, on a decimetric to metric scale, the long-term cyclicities in the number of laminae per centimetre are in agreement with those found in the bed-thickness series, varying from 0.7 to 1.3 m cycles. The number of laminae of the Solnhofen Formation ranges from about 5,800 to about 12,800 laminae per main cycle. This indicates that, under an assumption that the main cycle of the Solnhofen Formation corresponds to the Tithonian precessional one, a single lamina represents a multi-year time interval. Particularly, in the short-term cyclic domain, the laminated sequence contains clearly millimetric cycles consisting of about two to three cyclic components. It implies that laminae formation may result from the composite effect of two or three distinct climatic processes.