Black Sea Project: Northwest Black Sea Sediment Delivery 2015-2017

This phase of research addressed two main research themes.

The first addressed the nature and timing of sediment delivery to the northwest Black Sea from the Miocene onwards in five reports (#9-13). This entailed the compilation of a U-Pb database of basement and sedimentary samples from potential catchments to the northwest Black Sea and the release of 22 new detrital zircon U-Pb records from late Miocene to recent sediments from the three main studied drainage systems in the region. Further reports focused on the sandstone composition and provenance of the palaeo-Danube and palaeo-Dniester systems. The Danube currently supplies 95% of sediment to the northwest Black Sea, but has only begun doing so in the relatively recent past. It has a sand composition that can be easily distinguished from the other sediment contributors, including from the previously dominant palaeo-Dniester system. A further report tested regional sandstone compositional inconsistencies in the published literature.

The second theme was to develop a biostratigraphic framework for the region (#14-15). It documents a single 6.4 km thick, magnetostratigraphically dated biostratigraphic reference section for the northwest Black Sea. The section spans the late Miocene to Early Pleistocene in the Dacian Basin, a silled embayment of the northwest Black Sea basin. Detailed descriptions of shallow-water macrofauna and microfauna are complemented by a full palynological dataset. These records provide a stratigraphic reference section for wells in the Black Sea allowing the correlation of well records to both the Paratethys regional and the global timescales.

Black Sea Project: Northwest Black Sea Sediment Delivery 2015-2017
Miocene bivalves from the Slănicul de Buzau section, Romania

Completed: November 2020.

Contact(s): Stephen Vincent

Reports Issued in This Project

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