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A wet climatic terrestrial carbonate record in the middle-upper Pleistocene, north Tunisia

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Abstract

The middle-upper Pleistocene Borj Edouane unit records a singular spectrum of terrestrial carbonates in a shallow depression on Cretaceous rocks in north Tunisia. This study aims to decipher the depositional system and reveal the climatic and paleohydrological conditions of the carbonate facies deposition. They are grouped into two facies associations: (1) a calcrete–palustrine and (2) a composite microbialite-travertine, surrounded by a marginal alluvial association along the western and northern borders of the basin. The calcrete–palustrine association extends along the westernmost south–north strip of the basin, reflecting calcrete development on distal alluvial fan deposits and pedogenic modification (palustrine facies) of shallow fresh-water carbonates. The composite microbialite-travertine, extending along north–south strips in the middle and eastern areas of the basin, consists of microbialite, clastic microbialite–travertine, and travertine associations. Microbialites were developed in fluvio-lacustrine environments within the central strip and pass eastward into the travertines through the clastic microbialite–travertine association. The latter was deposited from currents and in shallow ponds along a bench next to the travertine-depositing springs, linked to a fault system in the eastern margin of the basin. The carbonate depositional system shows an asymmetrical distribution of facies that parallels the paleohydrological asymmetry along the basin. Water supply was restricted in the western part of the basin and abundant in its eastern areas linked to spring waters that kept stable lake levels in the basin center, favoring the genesis of microbialites. The presence of lacustrine carbonates in the studied area indicates higher water availability during the Middle-Late Pleistocene and that climate in North Africa was wetter than today.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research of Tunisia, and MINECO CGL2014-54818-P. I. Armenteros thanks Professor K. Regaya and the Faculty of Sciences of Bizerte for their hospitality. The thorough review by Dr. C. Arenas, full of useful suggestions, as well as that of two anonymous reviewers helped to improve the original manuscript, for which we are grateful. We are thankful to Dr. C. Recio for the constructive review of the manuscripts and to Judith A. Alfonso for her patient help in the English review. This work is an extension of Naoufel Ghannem's thesis based on new data and interpretations from the 2018 field campaign.

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  1. Faculty of Sciences, Department of Geology, Salamanca University, 37071, Salamanca, Spain

    Ildefonso Armenteros

  2. Faculty of Science of Bizerte, University of Carthage, 7021, Zarzouna, Tunisia

    Naoufel Ghannem

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  1. Ildefonso Armenteros
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Correspondence to Ildefonso Armenteros.

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Armenteros, I., Ghannem, N. A wet climatic terrestrial carbonate record in the middle-upper Pleistocene, north Tunisia. Facies 67, 5 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10347-020-00612-x

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