Using Trace Fossils to Determine the Role of Oceanic Anoxic Event II on the Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway Paleoenvironment
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Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2015 Using Trace Fossils to Determine the Role of Oceanic Anoxic Event II on the Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway Paleoenvironment Jacob Frederick Grosskopf Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the Earth Sciences Commons Recommended Citation Grosskopf, Jacob Frederick, "Using Trace Fossils to Determine the Role of Oceanic Anoxic Event II on the Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway Paleoenvironment" (2015). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 3892. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/3892 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. USING TRACE FOSSILS TO DETERMINE THE ROLE OF OCEANIC ANOXIC EVENT II ON THE CRETACEOUS WESTERN INTERIOR SEAWAY PALEOENVIRONMENT A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of Geology and Geophysics by Jacob Frederick Grosskopf B.S., Louisiana Tech University, 2007 M.S., Louisiana State University, 2010 May 2015 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Funding for this PhD dissertation was provided by graduate assistantships from the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Louisiana State University as well as a Marathon Oil Company Geology Scholarship, the Mary Jo Klosterman Fellowship, and the Houston Energy Professorship. I would like to thank my major advisor, Dr. Brooks Ellwood, for his help, advice, and expertise over the course of this research. I would like to thank Dr. Bruce Schumacher (United States Forest Service), geologist for the Comanche National Grasslands, La Junta, CO, for his expertise, access to field sites, and aid in correlation and data collection in the field at Site 4. I would also like to thank Dr. Art Donovan and Rand Gardner at BP, for access to the southern site field area. Thanks are extended to Dr. David Watkins at the University of Nebraska– Lincoln for help in locating and correlating Site 6. I would also like to thank the technicians at the United States Geological Survey Core Research Center in Denver, CO, for help during my multiple visits to the facility. Thanks to Ken Ratcliffe, director of Chemostrat, for running samples for geochemistry. At Louisiana State University, I would like to thank Emad El Far for discussions about my project, and with help in the field and time-series work. Thanks to Ryan Ellis for his pictures and preliminary research on Lozier Canyon. Further, I would like to thank Rick Young for guidance on how to use lab equipment, and Amber Ellwood for help in the lab. Thanks to Tom Schramm for discussion about this project and all things geology. I would also like to thank Amy Cone, a former fellow graduate student, for her advice on all things, including editing. Lastly, thanks to my dissertation committee, Drs. Huiming Bao, Samuel Bentley, and Achim Herrmann, for their expertise across the many unique disciplines over which this project spans. ii PREFACE The dissertation work presented herein is formatted for publishing in academic journals. Each chapter represents a different paper to be published. Thus, each chapter should be considered its own separate element in that it addresses a different particular problem in the dissertation work. For this reason the separate, but complete chapters have unique abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, conclusion, and reference sections. The main conclusions from each of these chapters are reported in a standalone conclusions section. Following the conclusions section, there is a reference summary section that lists all references used for the entire dissertation. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................................ ii PREFACE ...................................................................................................................................... iii ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................... vi CHAPTER 1: BASAL BRIDGE CREEK LIMESTONE BED (BED 63) TRACE FOSSILS INDICATE OXYGENATED BOTTOM-WATERS THROUGHOUT THE CRETACEOUS WESTERN INTERIOR SEAWAY DURING OCEANIC ANOXIC EVENT II .......................... 1 ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................................. 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................... 2 Purpose and approach ......................................................................................................... 8 METHODS ............................................................................................................................... 9 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION ............................................................................................. 16 Correlation of Bed 63 along each transect ........................................................................ 16 Site A synchronicity with CTB GSSP ........................................................................ 19 Site B synchronicity with CTB GSSP ........................................................................ 21 Spatial variation in benthic oxygen concentrations .......................................................... 25 West–East Transect ..................................................................................................... 26 North–South Transect ................................................................................................. 28 Temporal variation in benthic oxygen concentrations ...................................................... 29 Orbitally-forced changes in CWIS oxygen ................................................................. 30 CONCLUSIONS..................................................................................................................... 31 REFERENCES ....................................................................................................................... 32 CHAPTER 2: TRACE FOSSILS AND SEDIMENT ACCUMULATION RATES FROM CRETACEOUS WESTERN INTERIOR SEAWAY OUTCROPS EVIDENCE VARIABLE BENTHIC OXYGEN CONDITIONS FOR THE DURATION OF THE OAE II INTERVAL .. 37 ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................ 37 INTRODUCTION AND PREVIOUS WORK ....................................................................... 38 Cretaceous Interior Seaway Paleoenvironment ................................................................ 38 Paleogeography and Stratigraphy ..................................................................................... 40 Bioturbation: Trace fossils as benthic oxygen indicators ................................................. 44 Purpose and approach ....................................................................................................... 45 METHODS ............................................................................................................................. 47 Magnetic Susceptibility .................................................................................................... 48 Gamma-ray readings ......................................................................................................... 51 Time-series Analysis ......................................................................................................... 52 Trace Fossil Data .............................................................................................................. 53 Geochemistry Data............................................................................................................ 53 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION ............................................................................................. 55 Time-series data ................................................................................................................ 64 iv Trends in limestone beds .................................................................................................. 64 Bed 63 limestone......................................................................................................... 64 Other traceable limestone beds ................................................................................... 66 Geochemistry .................................................................................................................... 67 Periodicity in ORIs indicates oxic conditions during OAE II in the CWIS ..................... 69 Resolving small-scale variation in oxygen concentrations ............................................... 72 Precessional-scale variation in thick limestone beds? ................................................ 83 CONCLUSIONS..................................................................................................................... 87 REFERENCES ......................................................................................................................