PALEOCENE REEF SEDIMENTS FROM THE MAIELLA CARBONATE PLATFORM, ITALY

Upper Cretaceous and Paleocene reef limestones from the Maiella carbon ate platform show how reefs evolved during a time of faunal turn-over. Biostratigraphy and facies analysis of the reef limestones reveal. th e details of reef growth, composition, and age. Rudists disappeared as reef builders from the Maiella platform shortly before the Cretaceous /Tertiary boundary. Small coral-algal reefs became established in the Danian to Late Thanetian. These scleractinian-red algal dominated boun dstones and framestones represent two periods of reef sedimentation an d the subsequent interruption of reef growth by emersion and erosion, controlled primarily by fluctuations of relative sea-level. The coral- algal reefs evolved as the taxonomic composition of reef organisms cha nged. The Paleocene reef sediments are preserved as large slide blocks and as boulders redeposited from the shallow-water platform onto the slope during the course of the Paleocene.