While many studies of ancient fan deposits qualitatively describe lateral architectural variability (e.g., axis-to-fringe, proximal-to-distal), these relationships are rarely quantified. In order to enable comparison of key relationships that control the lateral architecture of submarine depositional environments, published bed-scale outcrop correlation panels were digitized from five different environments (channel, levee, lobe, channel-lobe-transition-zone, basin plain). Measured architectural parameters (bed thickness, bed thinning rates, lateral correlation distance, net-to-gross) provide a quantitative framework to compare lithology architectures between environments.

Abstract The sapropel record of the eastern Mediterranean provides unique insight into the primary climatic, oceanographic, and biological drivers of organic carbon enrichment in marine sediments. The dominant source of organic matter, timing of oxygen depletion at the sea floor, and extent of metazoan reworking of these deposits remain unclear. These questions are addressed by combining microbeam imaging with bulk and molecular geochemical characterization of several Pliocene sapropels, revealing four microfacies which record distinct palaeoceanographic conditions, phytoplankton assemblages, and degrees of postdepositional reworking. The most organic‐rich, carbonate‐lean sapropel intervals consist of alternating 10–60‐μm‐thick organic and detrital mineral laminae. Petrographical features consistent with a pelagic origin, δ15N <−1.8 and the presence of 2α‐methylhopanes indicate that organic laminae formed by mass sedimentation of N‐fixing colonial cyanobacteria (Trichodesmium). The association of framboidal pyrite with organic laminae suggests that mass sedimentation led to the abrupt development of sea floor anoxia. Unlike similar Quaternary sapropels, no petrographic or biomarker evidence is found for a mat‐forming diatom contribution to these organic‐rich, laminated intervals. However, episodic mass sedimentation was not found to be a universal ingredient of sapropel formation. Carbonate‐lean, weakly laminated intervals contain >50 μm organomineral aggregates, interpreted as marine snow, whereas carbonate microfossil‐rich intervals record periods of nitrogen fixation and moderately increased primary production by a diverse assemblage of calcareous, organic‐walled, and siliceous plankton. The results presented here further show that burrowing by microscopic meiofauna impacted most sapropels, extending into seemingly laminated intervals below obvious disruption from burrowing macrofauna, indicating that metazoans influence organic carbon burial in oxygen‐depleted settings even where physical displacement of sediment is not visible.

The Depositional Record The journal will emphasize the application of sedimentary processes to the study of paleoclimate, changes of the chemical environment throughout deep time (such as changes in the composition of seawater oxygen isotopic composition and Mg/Ca ratios, ocean acidifi cation etc.), modern studies on ocean acidifi cation, extraterrestrial sedimentology, application of genetic methods to understanding sedimentological processes, such as using genetic probes to understand processes, interaction between the biological and geological systems such as calcifi cation in carbonate secreting organisms, the role of microbes in the formation of carbonate minerals, the use of novel geochemical methods such as clumped isotopes, the application of non-mass dependent fractionation of systems involving more than two stable isotopes, as well as normal sedimentary processes. The journal will cover all time scales from the Modern to the Ancient Earth. Hence we would include experimental studies on modern organisms and sedimentary systems as well as the application of such results to the oldest sediments on Earth and periods in between.

A flexural depocentre in the Western Canada Foreland Basin records a gradually decreasing subsidence rate in response to a corresponding reduction in deformation in the orogenic wedge. Environments vary from marine to alluvial and record high-frequency sea-level changes down-dip. Up-dip alluvial aggradation-degradation cycles are most plausibly attributed to cyclical changes in rainfall.

Abstract The Oman Mountains preserve a Cretaceous continental margin transect with the proximal Arabian carbonate shelf and the adjacent deep Hawasina Basin. Today, the sediments from the Arabian Platform outcrop in the Oman Mountains (Jabal Akdhar and Saih Hatat) and in the Adam Foothills. The western part of the Adam Foothills provides insight into the evolution of a Late Cretaceous intra‐platform basin with organic‐rich sediments in the central part of this basin. The aims of this study are (a) to establish a biostratigraphy and chemostratigraphy of the Natih Formation and (b) to reconstruct depositional conditions of organic‐rich sediments in an intra‐platform basin during Cenomanian–Turonian times. The hypothesis that local black shale formation is an expression of global perturbations of the global carbon cycle will be tested. Reconstruction of the depositional history of the Arabian Platform and its intra‐platform basin within a global palaeoclimatic framework requires an accurate time frame. The Upper Albian to mid‐Turonian biostratigraphy of the Natih Formation has resulted in controversial age models that will be integrated into a solid chemostratigraphic framework with additional biostratigraphic data. A major positive δ13C excursion (+4·6‰) has been identified as of Middle Cenomanian age, which is confirmed by an ammonite datum. A second positive δ13C excursion (+4·5‰) following a major negative excursion (−1·0‰) confirms the existence of the Cenomanian/Turonian Boundary Event. The accurate chemostratigraphy and biostratigraphy confirms that major source rocks in the Mishrif‐Natih Basin precedeOAE2. Low δ13C values measured in the sediments of the Natih B member are considered a consequence of diagenetic alteration. Elevated organic carbon contents and argillaceous sediments alternating with limestones resulted in diagenetic conditions favouring formation of authigenic calcite depleted in C‐13.

Abstract A study of an International Continental Drilling Program core recovered from the middle of the modern Dead Sea has identified microbial traces within this subsurface hypersaline environment. A comparison with an active microbial mat exhibiting similar evaporative processes characterized iron‐sulphur mineralization and exopolymeric substances resulting from microbial activity. Exopolymeric substances were identified in the drilled sediment but unlike other hypersaline environments, it appears that they have a limited effect on the precipitation of calcium carbonate in the sedimentary column. Sulphate reduction, however, plays a role in all types of evaporative facies, leading to the formation of diagenetic iron sulphides in glacial and interglacial intervals. Their synthesis seems to occur under progressive sulphidation that generally stops at greigite because of incomplete sulphate reduction. The latter may be caused by a lack of suitable organic matter in this hypersaline, hence energy‐demanding, environment. Pyrite may be found in periods of high lake productivity, when more labile organic matter is available. The carbon and sulphur cycles are thus influenced by microbial activity in the Dead Sea environment and this influence results in diagenetic transformations in the deep sediment.

Abstract Few proxies exist to identify aridity in the depositional record, although drylands coverca30% of the modern continental surface. New exposures in a siliciclastic and carbonate sequence in an arid to hyperarid basin at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania provide a unique multi‐proxy record of a 1·85 Ma landscape that was exploited by early humans. The 2 m thick sequence of clastics and carbonates that are exposed along a 450 m outcrop records climate change over a single precession (dry‐wet‐dry) cycle. Siliciclastic data (sedimentary structures, grain size, mineralogy) and biological data are combined with data for a 10 to 35 cm thick limestone (stable isotopes, elemental geochemistry, petrography) to generate a depositional facies model for a siteDK(Douglass Korongo) on this dry rift basin landscape. This site was situated on a low gradient, distal portion of a volcaniclastic alluvial fan. The clastics are intercalated distal alluvial fan sandy silts and lake clays that accumulated in a low energy environment. Groundwater discharge and the alkaline springs and seeps during wet‐to‐dry change in climate made a freshwater carbonate‐rich environment. Bedded lithofacies (a lime mudstone with fossils) were deposited in shallow standing (spring‐fed) pools, while nodular lithofacies with calcite spherulites indicate permanently saturated ground (seeps). Both environments experienced similar diagenesis, that is, the precipitation of authigenic barite from supersaturated groundwater, desiccation and pedogenesis, and late‐stage calcite precipitation. Compositional and isotopic data suggest that a fresh groundwater‐fed system was available to early humans even during dry intervals of the precession cycle.

Abstract We present a barium (Ba) isotope fractionation study of marine biogenic carbonates (aragonitic corals). The major aim is to provide first constraints on the Ba isotope fractionation between modern surface seawater and coral skeleton. Mediterranean surface seawater was found to be enriched in the heavy Ba isotopes compared to previously reported values for marine open ocean authigenic and terrestrial minerals. In aquarium experiments with a continuous supply of Mediterranean surface water, the Ba isotopic composition of the bulk sample originating from cultured, aragonitic scleractinian corals (δ137/134Ba between +0·16 ± 0·12‰ and +0·41 ± 0·12‰) were isotopically identical or lighter than that of the ambient Mediterranean surface seawater (δ137/134Ba = +0·42 ± 0·07‰, 2SD), which corresponds to an empirical maximum value of Ba isotope fractionation of Δ137/134Bacoral‐seawater = −0·26 ± 0·14‰ at 25°C. This maximum Ba isotope fractionation is close and identical in direction to previous results from inorganic precipitation experiments with aragonite‐structured pure BaCO3 (witherite). The variability in measured Ba concentrations of the cultured corals is at odds with a uniform distribution coefficient, D(Ba/Ca), thus indicating stronger vital effects on isotope than element discrimination. This observation supports the hypothesis that the Ba isotopic compositions of these corals do not result from simple equilibrium between the skeleton and the bulk seawater. Complementary coral samples from natural settings (tropical shallow‐water corals from the Bahamas and Florida and cold‐water corals from the Norwegian continental shelf) show an even wider range in δ137/134Ba values (+0·14 ± 0·08 to +0·77 ± 0·11‰), most probably due to additional spatial and/or temporal seawater heterogeneity, as indicated by recent publications.