Abstract
Rudists are a group of bizarrely shaped marine bivalves that lived inthe Tethys Ocean from the Late Jurassic to the latest Cretaceous. They aremorphologically variable, including snail-like, cup-like, and horn-like shapes. Inthe Middle East, Cretaceous carbonates with rudists and rudist fragments are wellexposed in many outcrops as well as oil and gas fields. For rudist-bearingcarbonates in the subsurface, knowledge of rudist morphology and mode of occurrencemust be derived from observation of drillcores; however, understanding thethree-dimensional (3D) geometry of rudists from observation of core surfaces isdifficult. In paleontological studies of rudists, X-ray computerized tomography (CT)scans have been carried out to reconstruct the inside texture of rudist shells forthe purpose of taxonomic research. In contrast, in the oil and gas industry,application of X-ray CT scanning technology is generally focused on directmeasurement of reservoir properties. Studies of rudist fossils within drillcores bymeans of X-ray CT have not yet been conducted. We have developed a new protocol toobserve core interiors using X-ray CT. We obtained high-resolution 3D images ofrudists in a drillcore by means of surface rendering, volume rendering, and 3Dprinting. X-ray CT and 3D modeling is a novel method for non-destructive analyses ofthe morphology and mode of occurrence of fossils within drillcores.
Highlights
The Late Cretaceous was the only time interval in Earth history when bivalves were one of the major components of carbonate platforms
The combination of X-ray computerized tomography (CT) imaging with the three techniques for visualizing the CT data allows us to clarify the morphology and vertical and spatial development of rudist bioherms/biostromes and delineate their initiation, development, and demise
Our new techniques for studying core samples, in combination with direct visual observation, enable identification of rudists at the species level if they are in a good state of preservation, which will facilitate future studies of rudist biostratigraphy
Summary
The Late Cretaceous was the only time interval in Earth history when bivalves were one of the major components of carbonate platforms. The bivalves were rudists, a group of bizarrely shaped marine bivalves living in the Tethys Ocean from the Late Jurassic to the latest Cretaceous. They are morphologically variable, including snail-like, cup-like, and horn-like shapes. The depositional environment of rudistbearing carbonates and their porosity and permeability are closely related and, important for oil/gas exploration (e.g., Yamanaka et al 2019b) This is the case for Upper Cretaceous platform carbonates in the southern Arabian Peninsula including at Abu Dhabi (Burchette and Britton 1985; Burchette 1993; Skelton et al 1995; Cestari and Sartorio 1995; Özer et al 2009)
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