Manuscripts in progress

We are at the very end of the Po Plain Project and we are currently just working on several manuscripts to publish soon.  I will also be presenting a presentation on our first (hopefully soon!) publication at the National Geological Society of America Conference this November in Charlotte, NC.

My goal for this semester is to publish 2 papers, one on the stratigraphic paleobiology of the Po Plain and another on the taphonomy of Lentidium mediterraneum across system tracts and depositional environments.  Here is an example figure from the taphonomy paper we are working on.

These are just 3 shells with varying taphonomic scores with elemental maps of certain areas of the shell.  We are interested in the micro-scale degradation of the shells across different depositional environments and system tracts.  Shell A is from a delta front/strandplain depositional environment during the Holocene highstand system tract (regression).  Shell B is from an inner lagoon environment during the Holocene highstand system tract found in silty clay and peat dominated sediments.  Shell C is from an outer lagoon/bay environment during the Holocene transgressive system tract, specifically from a wave ravinement surface.

Shell A contains heavy pitting with pyrite occurring preferentially in the pits.  The shell also has the presence of barite which occurs primarily in marine waters authigenically in association with organic matter. Barite also can occur diagenetically within sulfate reducing sediment in anoxic/oxic boundaries.

Shell B has pyrite framboids forming across the shell with the presence of organic carbon.

Shell C has the presence of aluminosilicates with some iron.

All these characteristics are not seen under a binocular microscope, in order to see these things we had to use an Environmental Scanning Electron Microscope (ESEM) and in order to get relative elemental abundances we had to use Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDS).