Identification of maximum flooding surfaces at different scales: The case of the Piacenzian to Gelasian Cutro Clay and Strongoli Sandstone (Crotone Basin, southern Italy)

The Piacenzian to Gelasian deep-to shallow-marine succession cropping out in the NE part of the Crotone Basin, southern Italy, is ideal for applying integrated sedimentological and micropaleontological criteria to recognize cryptic surfaces of sequence stratigraphic significance, such as the maximum flooding surface (MFS), and other surfaces devoid of physical expression, such as the maximum water-depth surface (MWDS). The micropaleon-tological criteria consist in the calculation of parameters such as the % fragmentation of benthic foraminifera, the ratio between distal and proximal benthic foraminifera, and the plankton/benthos ratio. In any sequence, the offset between the lowest values of % fragmentation and the highest values of the distal/proximal ratio defines a relatively thin uncertainty interval in which the MFS should lie. Moreover, the MWDS is inferred to correspond to the peak of the plankton/benthos ratio, which may coincide with the MFS or it may be slightly above it. Notably, the method allows to recognize MFSs and MWDSs of different hierarchical ranks, and therefore it is effective in the study of sequences of any scale, including modern studies of high-resolution sequence stratigraphy.