New continental Carboniferous and Permian faunas of Morocco: implications for biostratigraphy, palaeobiogeography and palaeoclimate

Abstract

Late Palaeozoic sediments in central Morocco and the High Atlas Mountains document the development of this area during the formation of the Mauretanide part of the Hercynian orogeny. Continental basins formed during the Stephanian and Permian. Although scattered in time, they provide valuable biogeographical and climatic information for the Mauretanides as a link between the Variscides in the east, the Appalachians in the west and the Karoo in the south. New blattid insects in the Souss Basin enable correlation to Early Stephanian B. Furthermore, we document the oldest African tetrapod tracks (Batrachichnus, Dromopus). Litho- and biofacies indicate seasonally wet and dry phases. Wet red beds of the Khenifra Basin have produced tetrapod bones and the tracks Limnopus, Batrachichnus and Dromopus. Macrofloras give a transitional Autunian/Saxonian age. This fits well into the Artinskian wet phase. Similar facies pattern in the Tiddas Basin are correlated by tetrapod tracks as transitional Artinskian to Kungurian. Advanced tetrapod tracks of Synaptichnium and Rhynchosauroides were discovered in the Ikakern Formation of the Argana Basin, dated by pareiasaur remains as Wuchiapingian. Red beds of similar type are known in Europe, for example, from the Late Permian of the Lodève Basin. They originated during the Wuchiapingian wet phase.

Biotic changes around the radioisotopically constrained Carboniferous-Permian boundary in the Boskovice Basin (Czech Republic)

“…Goeppert 1858, Geinitz 1865, Gothan 1912, Havlena 1964. This opinion was questioned by Němejc (1951) and later abandoned in agreement with findings of callipterids in the stratotype area of the Stephanian stage in French Massif Central and elsewhere in Europe (Bourouz & Doubinger 1977, Kerp 1988, Broutin et al 1990, Wagner & Álvarez-Vázquez 2010, North America (DiMichele et al 2013, DiMichele 2014 and north Africa (Hmich et al 2006). Consequently Wagner & Álvarez-Vázquez (2010) assigned their Autunia conferta zone to a Stephanian C-lower Autunian age, which is now considered to represent part of the Gzhelian (Gradstein et al 2012;International Chronostratigraphic Chart v2016/v4).…”

“…Callipterids have subsequently been discovered in evidently Late Pennsylvanian strata at a number of localities in Europe, North America and North Africa (Broutin et al 1986(Broutin et al , 1990Kerp 1988Kerp , 1996Lyons & Darrah 1989;DiMichele & Aronson 1992;Hmich et al 2006;DiMichele et al 2008DiMichele et al , 2013Wagner & Álvarez-Vázquez 2010;Pše-nička et al 2011;DiMichele 2014). In contrast, the Carboniferous-Permian boundary in purely continental settings could be better constrained by insect and conchostracan biostratigraphy, which are in places directly linked by conodont biostratigraphy to the Global Marine Standard Scale (e.g.…”

Late Permian (Lopingian) Terrestrial Ecosystems: A Global Comparison With New Data From the Low Latitude Bletterbach Biota

“…An excellently-exposed Permian-Triassic redbed succession crops out in this basin and consists of alluvial, fluvial, lacustrine, aeolian and playa deposits, which were laid down in a continental rift basin during the initial opening phase of the central Atlantic (Manspeizer, 1988;Zühlke et al, 2004). The Ikakern Formation consists of alluvial fan conglomerates fining upwards and laterally into alluvial plain conglomerates, sandstones, and mudstones (Hmich et al, 2006;Voigt et al, 2010). The Argana Basin was located at approximately latitude 0-5°S during the late Permian (Scotese, 2003;Stampfli and Borel, 2004;Blakey, 2008).…”

“…The Argana Basin was located at approximately latitude 0-5°S during the late Permian (Scotese, 2003;Stampfli and Borel, 2004;Blakey, 2008). Although the late Permian Argana Basin overall was characterised by semiarid climatic conditions (Hmich et al, 2006), the deposition of the Tourbihine Member of the Ikakern Formation, where most tetrapod fossils have been found, has been correlated with the onset of the (middle) Wuchiapingian wet phase that interrupted the overall drying trend of the Permian climatic curve . In the palaeoclimatic model of Rees et al (2002), this region is part of the tropical wet biome (Roscher et al, 2008;Smith et al, 2015).…”

“…The Ikakern Formation of the Argana Basin has yielded both vertebrate remains and fossil tracks (Dutuit, 1976(Dutuit, , 1988Jalil and Dutuit, 1996;Jalil and Janvier, 2005;Hmich et al, 2006;Steyer and Jalil, 2009;Voigt et al, 2010). The assemblage is dominated by small-sized captorhinids (36.4%), followed by basal neodiapsids (18.2%), and large-sized parareptiles (pareiasaurs, 18.2%).…”