12. INTEGRATED CALCAREOUS PLANKTON BIOSTRATIGRAPHY AND CYCLOSTRATIGRAPHY AT SITE 9641

R. Sprovieri,2 E. Di Stefano,2 M. Howell,3 T. Sakamoto,4 A. Di Stefano,5 and M. Marino6

ABSTRACT

Twenty-one calcareous plankton biostratigraphic events have been identified in Ocean Drilling Program Site 964, between the upper part of the Piacenzian and the Holocene and correlated to the relative abundance fluctuations of Globigerinoides spp. and the oxygen isotope stages. Our study essentially supports previous investigations on coeval Mediterranean sequences with one (minor) difference: the last occurrence of Discoaster brouweri is correlated with oxygen isotopic stage/relative abundance fluctuation 71 instead of 73. Correlation of the sequence of Site 964 with other Pliocene and Pleistocene sequences studied in the Mediterranean basin in the last years proves that the reported biostratigraphic events are essentially synchronous. Only minor discrepancies exist between the proposed ages in this paper and the ages reported by other authors. The chronostratigraphic subdivision of the studied interval is reported according to the accepted definition of the chronostratigraphic boundaries.

1Robertson, A.H.F., Emeis, K.-C., Richter, C., and Camerlenghi, A. (Eds.), 1998. Proc. ODP, Sci. Results, 160: College Station, TX (Ocean Drilling Program).
2Department of Geology and Geodesy, Corso Tukory, 131, 90134 Palermo, Italy. rspr@mbox.unipa.it
3College of Science and Mathematics, South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208, U.S.A.
4Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, 060, Japan.
5Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Corso Italia, 55, 95129 Catania, Italy.
6Department of Geology and Geophysics, Via E. Orabona, 4, 70125 Bari, Italy.