Genesis of unusual lithologies associated with the Late Middle Devonian Taghanic biocrisis in the type Taghanic succession of New York State and Pennsylvania

Abstract

The Middle Devonian (late middle Givetian) Tully Formation in New York State is the type regional expression of the global Taghanic Biocrisis. It is marked by anomalous development of massive to rhythmically bedded, micritic limestone deposits within a vastly thicker Acadian foreland basin clastic succession. Lower-medial Tully carbonates record the incursion of tropical Old World Realm (OWR) taxa (Tully Fauna) and the outage of the long-standing, higher diversity, cooler-water, endemic Eastern Americas Realm (EAR) biota (Hamilton Fauna). Succeeding Tully strata record a return of the Hamilton Fauna followed by its demise due, both to replacement by the lower diversity, cosmopolitan Genesee Fauna and by the overspread of widespread anoxic bottom conditions coupled with the onset of drastically increased sediment input following Tully Group deposition.Massive, micritic limestones, yielding modest diversity Tully Fauna assemblages are particularly characteristic of the lower-medial Tully succession on the western New York Tully platform; these are coeval with nearly barren ribbon limestone and siltstone deposits in the adjacent New Berlin (east-central New York) and central Pennsylvania basins. These depocenters trapped terrigenous sediment and helped to create sediment-starved conditions on the platform. Anomalous Tully carbonate deposition is believed to be coincident with strong super estuarine water mass stratification in offshore Tully shelf and basin settings where a warmer, denser, more saline water mass flowed northward (shoreward) across the study area beneath a counter flow of oxygenated, river-influenced surface water. Dysoxic conditions would have developed below the pycnocline, favoring the Tully Fauna incursion, precipitation of carbonate mud, and possibly promoting the formation of ooidal chamosite.At least five thin (1–30cm-thick) mappable beds of black, ooidal, chamosite, are observed in Taghanic shelf margin, slope, and basin deposits. These beds are typically intensely bioturbated, variably rich in associated siderite, contain corroded low-diversity fossil assemblages, and are regionally associated with condensed lag deposits above unconformities. Work by others suggests that chamosite formation occurs under minimally reducing, post-oxic, interstitial conditions which are followed, in turn, by more strongly reducing conditions which allow for variable siderite and pyrite formation. Terrestrial pedogenic alteration of silicates by evolving land plant communities under warm, humid conditions led to an increased supply of kaolinite as well as Iron oxides and hydroxides that served as precursors to chamosite formation. In the New Berlin Basin, the transgressive, top-Hamilton-base-Taghanic succession is marked by a succession of diastems associated with basin deepening and upward-increasing chamosite occurrence in dysoxic facies. Occurrence of ooidal chamosite in upper medial Tully platform deposits (Smyrna Bed) may reflect water mass stratification and extreme sediment-starvation at the shelf margin. Eastward spectral transformation of sparsely fossiliferous Smyrna ooidal chamosite in the western New Berlin Basin into richly fossiliferous, non-chamositic, equivalent neritic deposits east of that basin, suggests that the counter-flow of oxygen and nutrient-rich, lower salinity water had blocked the denser, restricted water layer from advancing over the eastern Tully clastic shelf closer to shore.