Campanian to Maastrichtian Pollen Biostratigraphy and Floral Turnover Rates, Colville River Region, North Slope of Alaska

Norman O. Frederiksen, Katharine S. Schindler

This study is based on occurrence data for 104 angiosperm pollen taxa from 83 pollen-bearing outcrop and core samples taken along the Colville River and stratigraphically distributed from the base of the Sentinel Hill Member of the Schrader Bluff Formation to the top of the Cretaceous section. Many of the pollen taxa are highly useful for intraregional correlations because they have remarkably short stratigraphic ranges and are consistently present within these ranges. Important similarities are present between North Slope pollen assemblages and those of western Canada, Siberia, and China. The Campanian-Maastrichtian boundary is approximately marked by the range bases of Wodehouseia edmontonicola and Senipites drumhellerensis and is nearly as far south (downsection) as Se tinel Hill core test 1. Based on pollen correlations with Alberta, the marine beds at Ocean Point are probably within the middle part of the Maastrichtian, and strata north of Ocean Point that contain Aquilapollenites conatus are uppermost Maastrichtian. Thus, if the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary in the study area is represented by an unconformity as our data suggest, the lowermost Paleocene is missing, not the uppermost Cretaceous. Maximum diversities of species of the stratigraphically significant Triprojectacites and Expressipollis groups are in the upper Campanian. Major turnovers of angiosperm taxa occurred late in the Campanian and in the Maastrichtian, but high rates of first appearances coincided with high rates of last appearances. Thus, once a fairly high overall angiosperm dive sity was established in the middle(?) Campanian, the diversity remained relatively constant until at or near the end of the Maastrichtian.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #91038©1987 AAPG Annual Convention, Los Angeles, California, June 7-10, 1987.