MID-CRETACEOUS STRATIGRAPHY, CLIMATE AND OCEANIC ANOXIC EVENTS: EXAMPLES FROM HIGH- AND LOW-LATITUDE SEDIMENTARY RECORDS

Although major progress in Cretaceous (145—66 Ma) paleoclimate and paleoceanography has been made during the last decade, high latitudinal environmental change has been less studied relative to low and mid-latitude marine and terrestrial environments (e.g., Herman and Spicer, 1996; Jenkyns et al., 2004; Herrle et al., 2015). As an alternative to drilling the Arctic Ocean, which is challenging and expensive, the Canadian Arctic Sverdrup Basin provides excellent exposures on land (Embry and Beauchamp, 2008). Still, the exact timing of massive carbon perturbations such as Oceanic Anoxic Events (OAEs) in relation to global warming and cooling periods and their consequences for the evolution of the marine mid-Cretaceous Arctic realm are poorly constrained. Importantly, records of the OAEs are lacking in the High Arctic, except for late Cenomanian/Turonian Boundary Event - OAE2. This event has been previously documented based on positive carbon isotope excursions from Ellef Ringnes Island (Pugh et al., 2014) and May Point and Glacier Fiord on Axel Heiberg Island (Lenniger et al., 2014; Herrle et al., 2015, respectively).

Here we present multi-proxy records from exceptional exposures of Cretaceous sediments on the southern part of Axel Heiberg Island (Canada) and from the Vocontian Basin (SE France) at a Cretaceous paleo-latitude of ~71°N and ~30°N respectively. Our work provides a unique view into the mid-Cretaceous paleoenvironmental history of the Arctic in a fluvial deltaic, brackish water to outer shelf setting of the Sverdrup Basin (Schröder-Adams et al., 2014) in comparison to hemipelagic successions from the semi-closed Vocontian Basin of the Western Tethyan Ocean (Herrle et al., 2014).