LETHAIA PROJECT PRESENTATIONS

LETHAIA 10 (1977) 58

‘Mid-Cretaceous Events’ (MCE) is one of the 35 key projects of the International Geological Correlation Programme (IGCP) of IUGS/Unesco. This project aims at establishing a workable global biostratigraphic zonation for the middle part of the Cretaceous, in- formally agreed as comprising the Albian to Coniacian stages. Based upon this stratigraphic framework, the geological, geophysical, biological, and climatic events of the mid-Cretaceous are studied and correlated in time and space.

MCE is directed from Uppsala, Sweden, by R. A. Reyment (Project Leader) and P. Bengtson (Project Secretary). A French secretariat is run by P. Y . Berthou, Paris, and a North American secretariat by D. E. Hattin, Bloomington, Indiana. The project news- letter, M C E News. was presented in Lethaia 9(4), p. 376.

After a constituent meeting in Paris, in November 1974, the first meeting of the official Project Working Group (comprising 21 persons from 14 countries) was held in Uppsala, in September 1975. On this occasion, the project leader and secretaries were elected. A number of previously submitted regional reports were discussed, and guidelines were drawn for the publica- tion of these and future regional reports, eventually intended to cover all the mid-Cretaceous areas of the world. The Project Working Group decided to initiate the following special projects: (1) Turonian Palaeo- geographical Map, (2) Integration of Global Macro- fossil Zonation, (3) Integration of Global Microfossil Zonation, and (4) Deep-sea Mid-Cretaceous.

The third international MCE meeting was held in August 1976 in Hokkaido, Japan, as a specialists’ field meeting for the study of the Upper Turonian. The eighteen papers presented will be published in 1977 in the Paleonrol. SOC. Jap. , Spec. Pap. In September 1976, the fourth international meeting was held, this time in Nice, France. This was also the Second Meeting of the Project Working Group. The Nice meeting, at- tended by 5 2 participants, consisted of: (1) a micro- palaeontological section, ( 2 ) a deep-sea section, (3) for- mation of working groups for the study of events, and (4) field studies in the mid-Cretaceous of the Alpes- Maritimes.

After two years of existence, MCE has now over 200 participants, representing nearly 40 countries. As a result of the initial inventory of the mid-Cretaceous of the world, 35 regional reports are in the press for the Ann. Mus. His t . Nat. Nice, 17 reports are in an advanced stage of preparation, and another 10 reports have been promised. The integration of global macro- and microfossil zonations and the work on the Turo- nian map are expected to be completed by 1977.

With the large number of specialists in different fields of geology participating in MCE, it is now pos- sible to put more emphasis into the principal aims of the project, i.e. the study of the events of the middle Cretaceous. These include: major transgressions and regressions, changes in continental configurations and positions (e.g. the opening of the South Atlantic and the Mozambique Channel and the separation of India from Gondwanaland), sedimentational events (e.g. evaporite and chalk formation and oceanic anoxic events), climatic events, biological events (e.g. evolu- tion of angiosperms, teleosts, and gastropods and the disjunct distribution of heteromorphic ammonites), geo- magnetic reversals, sea-floor spreading events, oro- genies, and epeirogenies. At the Nice meeting, 20 working groups on selected, especially important events were constituted.

The following regional groups and subgroups are working within MCE, or are in the process of forma- tion: the British, Central European, French, Romanian, Scandinavian, and West German regional groups and the North American Micropaleontologic Subgroup. In addition to the special projects initiated in 1975, there are a number of more loosely constituted working groups or special projects, such as: the history of the geosynclines, migration of sedimentary basins, biotic provincialism, relations of magnetostratigraphy to bio- stratigraphy, and dating of the South Atlantic salts. Some of these projects are acting within the newly formed working groups on the study of events.

MCE is collaborating with the Interunion Com- mission on Geodynamics and the recently reconstituted IUGS Subcommission on Cretaceous Stratigraphy.

For 1977 two project meetings are being planned: the Third Meeting of the Project Working Group, to be held in conjunction with the Second North Ameri- can Paleontological Convention, Lawrence, Kansas, in August, and a field meeting in the Iberian Peninsula, in September. The Lawrence meeting will he the last general meeting of MCE, after which specialists’ meet- ings and meetings of the various working groups, regional groups and subgroups will be held throughout the duration of the project. MCE is expected to have reached its main objectives by 1981, and the project will then be re-evaluated.

Further information on ‘Mid-Cretaceous Events’, in- cluding the newsletter M C E News, is available from the Project Leader or Project Secretariat at: Paleonto- logiska institutionen, Box 558, S-751 2 2 Uppsala, Swe- den.