Discovery of shallow-marine biofacies conodonts in a bioherm within the Carboniferous-Permian transition in the Omolon Massif, NE Russia near the North paleo-pole: Correlation with a warming spike in the southern hemisphere

Abstract

The conodont genera Hindeodus and Streptognathodus are reported for the first time within the Carboniferous-Permian transition in the northern high latitudes of the Paren' River, Omolon Massif, NE Russia. Several fossil groups, including brachiopods, bivalves, scaphopods and microgastropods were found to be prolific in the invertebrate-dominated bioherms. These bioherms occur within predominantly siliciclastic sequences with extremely poor fauna, whereas in the studied bioherms the diversity of the bivalves and brachiopods exceeded observed diversity elsewhere in coeval facies in NE Russia. The bioherms are biostratigraphically constrained as uppermost Pennsylvanian to lowermost Cisuralian based on ammonoids. The very unusual peak of bivalve and brachiopod diversity and the occurrence of conodonts that require minimum sea water temperatures of at least 10-12 °C indicate a short lived, but significant warming event at that time, at least of provincial significance. This event most likely corresponds with a short-lived warming event recently discovered in the east of the southern hemisphere, in Timor and Australia. Thus, the event is possibly of global significance.