Depositional setting and early diagenesis of the dinosaur eggshell-bearing Aren Fm at Bastus, Late Campanian, south-central Pyrenees ⁎ Margarita Díaz-Molina a, , Otto Kälin b, M. Isabel Benito a, Nieves Lopez-Martinez b, Enric Vicens c a Departamento de Estratigrafía, Facultad de Ciencias Geológicas e Instituto de Geología Económica (CSIC), Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain b Departamento de Paleontología, Facultad de Ciencias Geológicas e Instituto de Geología Económica (CSIC), Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain c Department de Geología, Facultat de Ciènces, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, 08193, Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain Received 9 June 2006; received in revised form 26 January 2007; accepted 2 February 2007 Abstract The Late Cretaceous Aren Fm exposed north of Bastus in the Tremp Basin (south-central Pyrenees) preserves an excellent record of dinosaur eggs laid in a marine littoral setting. Different from other cases reported in literature, at the Bastus site the preferential nesting ground was original beach sand. The coastal deposits of Aren Fm can be grouped into four facies assemblages, representing respectively shoreface, beachface, beach ridge plain and backbarrier lagoon environments. Shoreface deposits include fine- to coarse- grained hybrid arenites and subordinate quartz-dominated conglomerates with ripple structures of wave and wave-current origin. Beachface deposits are mainly storm beach conglomerates, but parallel-laminated foreshore arenites locally occur. Backbarrier lagoon deposits comprise of washover sandy conglomerates that grade laterally into sandy lime mudstones, biomicrites and marls. Beach ridge sediment, wherein the bulk of dinosaur eggs and eggshell debris occurs, predominantly is a reddish hybrid arenite that has undergone a complex early diagenetic evolution, including marine and meteoric cementation followed by soil development. The reddish arenites overlie wave-dominated shoreface deposits and in places pass laterally into lagoonal deposits. They originally formed shore ridges, that became stabilized during progradational episodes by pedogenesis (beach ridge, sensu [Otvos, E.G., 2000. Beach ridges—definitions and significance. Geomorphology 32, 83–108.]), which also affected the dinosaur eggs. The eggshell-bearing beach ridge arenites are typically preserved at the top of parasequences forming the systems tracts of a third-order sequence. Thick packages of this facies resulted from aggradation of barrier/beach ridge deposits, whose preservation below surfaces of transgressive erosion was favoured by incipient lithification. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Paleoenvironments; Beach ridges; Dinosaur eggs; Diagenesis; Cretaceous 1. Introduction In 1995, Sanz et al. presented evidence for dinosaur ⁎ Corresponding author. nesting in marine beach sands from the Late Campanian E-mail address: [email protected] (M. Díaz-Molina). Aren Sandstone Fm exposed north of the locality of Bastus 0037-0738/$ - see front matter © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.sedgeo.2007.02.002 206 M. Díaz-Molina et al. / Sedimentary Geology 199 (2007) 205–221 (Tremp Basin, south-central Pyrenees; Fig. 1). Such an site Sanz et al. (1995) estimated that a rock volume of interpretation was based on sedimentological and petro- 12,000 m3 contains the remains of some 300,000 eggs and logical arguments, suggesting that nesting occurred in Sander et al. (1998) inferred an occupation time in the shoreline sands, after beach abandonment and before order of 10,000 years for the same site. The abundance of consolidation and pedogenesis. The study centred on a clutches and eggshell debris at this locality was considered 2 m-thick package of reddish arenite containing well- to indicate nesting site fidelity. preserved clutches of dinosaur eggs and very abundant Subsequent work in the area concerned with the Aren eggshell debris (cf., Fig. 2 for location). In fact, for this egg Fm revealed that this occurrence is not unique, but that eggshell-bearing red arenites are frequently preserved at the top of parasequences, and that their spatial distribution was presumably controlled by coastal evolution and sea- level changes. The red arenites do not preserve diagnostic primary sedimentary structures, and depositional texture and composition were strongly altered during nesting and early diagenesis. Nevertheless, sedimentological and petrological analysis, along with the use of geomorpho- logical concepts, allowed us to interpret these deposits as beach ridges sensu (Otvos, 2000). The designation ‘beach ridge’, as defined by this author, applies to relict eolian and wave-built shore ridges isolated from the active beach zone by shoreline progradation, and becoming gradually stabilized by vegetation. In the studied exposure, sandbodies identified as beach ridges are similar in composition to the rocks representing the shoreface, as is in fact observed in recent beach ridges (e.g., Taylor and Stone, 1996). Beach ridge facies occur associated with other types of coastal deposits, the interpretation of some of which varies between authors, ranging from shelf-nearshore (e.g., Nagtegaal et al., 1983; Puigdefábregas and Souquet, 1986; Díaz-Molina, 1987; Simó, 1989; Arbués and Berástegui, 1996)tofluvio- deltaic (Ardèvol et al., 2000). The present contribution aims at providing a more detailed sedimentological and petrological description of these shoreline facies and their depositional architecture. Moreover, the facies hosting the dinosaur clutches at Bastus, and the inferred environmen- tal setting, markedly differ from other recently published cases, where concentrations of clutches and eggshell de- bris are reported to occur preferentially in muddy alluvial/ fluvial or lake shore/perilagoonal deposits with associated paleosols (e.g., Tandon et al., 1995; Dingus et al., 2000; Cojan et al., 2003; Escuer et al., 2003; Paik et al., 2004; Van Itterbeeck et al., 2004), and exceptionally in muddy tidal flat sediment (Lopez-Martinez et al., 2000). Fig. 1. (A) Location map of the exposure studied (geology after Losantos et al., 2002, modified): (1) Barremian–Aptian; (2) Aptian– 2. Geological setting Santonian; (3) Santonian–Campanian; (4) Campanian–Maastrichtian; (5) Maastrichtian–lower Eocene; (6) upper Eocene–Oligocene; (7) The exposure studied, covers an area of approxi- Quaternary. (B) Synthetic stratigraphic framework; (1) depositional mately 0.5×0.2 km, located in the footwall (Tremp– sequences and sequence boundaries (approximate position) after Ardèvol et al. (2000); (2) correlative depositional sequences (‘DS’)of Sellent syncline) to the Sant Corneli fault propagation Déramond et al. (1993). Grey box marks the stratigraphic interval anticline at the leading edge of the Boixols thrust sheet considered in this study. (Fig. 1A). The stratigraphic succession considered M. Díaz-Molina et al. / Sedimentary Geology 199 (2007) 205–221 207 Fig. 2. Upper Campanian stratigraphic record near Bastus showing interpreted sedimentary facies. H-2 marks approximate position of boundary between the Aren-1 and Aren-2 third-order sequences according to Ardèvol et al. (2000). Location of Fig. 7A and B in columns 2 and 1 respectively. (Fig. 2) includes part of the Aren Fm and the lower Sgavetti, 1994; Ardèvol et al., 2000). However, portion of the Tremp Fm (Mey et al., 1968). The Aren interpretations offered differ widely with regard to the Fm consists of shallow-marine clastic deposits and number and/or order of the depositional sequences exhibits progressive unconformities and facies varia- distinguished, and the type of mutual relationships. tions, related to the contemporaneous growth of the Sant Ardèvol et al. (2000) proposed a division of the Aren Corneli inversion anticline (Garrido Mejias, 1973; Fm and its correlative continental and basinal deposits Simó, 1986; Puigdefábregas and Souquet, 1986; Déra- into four third-order depositional sequences, referred to mond et al., 1993; Bond and McClay, 1995; Arbués and as Aren-1 to Aren-4, delimited by five sequence bound- Berástegui, 1996), which could have emerged as an aries labelled H-1 to H-5 (cf., Fig. 1B). According to island/peninsula during latest Cretaceous time (Nagte- these authors, each of these third-order sequences spans gaal et al., 1983). On a regional scale, the Aren Fm about 2 to 3 Ma, consists of a ‘siliciclastic–carbonate shows a general NW prograding trend, becoming package’ and represents a type-1 sequence sensu (Van gradually replaced landwards (E and S) by estuarine, Wagoner et al., 1988). The exposure described here lagoonal and continental deposits of the lower part of the comprises the topmost portion of the Aren-1 and part of Tremp Fm (e.g., Nagtegaal et al., 1983; Díaz-Molina, the Aren-2 third-order sequences of Ardèvol et al. 1987; Eichenseer, 1988; Ardèvol et al., 2000). (2000), that seem to correspond to part of what The Aren sandstones are ‘mixed assemblages of Déramond et al. (1993) called their depositional autochthonous (i.e., intrabasinal) and allochthonous (i.e., sequences ‘DS 75’ and ‘DS 71’ respectively. extrabasinal) components’ (Nagtegaal et al., 1983). Sequence boundary H-2 (between Aren-1 and Aren-2; Among the former, worn fossil fragments (bivalves, Fig. 2)overliestheG. calcarata biozone (top ∼75 Ma), echinoderms, bryozoans, larger foraminifera and coral- and precedes the G. gansseri biozone (bottom ∼72– line algae) prevail. Extrabasinal components are consti- 73 Ma, Lopez-Martinez et