Variation on Foraminiferal Composition in Cretaceous Black-Gray-Red Bed Sequence of Southern Tibet, China

An Upper Cretaceous black-gray-red bed sequence was deposited in the Tethys-Himalayan Sea where abundant foraminifera, especially planktons, were yielded. In the shallow shelf to the upper slope on the north margin of Indian plate was recorded an extinction-recovery-radiation cycle of foraminiferal fauna highly sensitive to paleoceanographical changes. The black unit, consisting of the Late Cenomanian-earliest Turonian beds, displays a major extinction, with keeled planktonic and many benthic species as the principal victims at the end of the Cenomanian when existed only low diversity, surface water-dwelling foraminifera. The gray unit spans a long-term recovery interval from the Turonian to the early Santonian with keeled planktonic foraminifera returning stepwise to the water column. The planktonic biota in the red unit, extremely abundant, indicate a biotic radiation during the Late Santonian and the Early Campanian, implying that the high oxygen levels had returned to all the oceanic depth levels, and that the water stratification disappeared, followed by the radiation of all depth-dwellers. The variation on foraminiferal faunas from the whole sequence refers to the extreme warm climate that appeared in the Middle Cretaceous and to the declined temperature toward the late epoch. Substantial deposits for this warming and cooling zones represent the black shales in the Middle Cretaceous and the red beds in the later period of the southern Tibet. The change in the foraminiferal composition corresponded to the formation of dysaerobic facies and to the development of high-oxidized circumstances.