Permo-karbońskie fauny koralowe Spitsbergenu

Abstract

PERMO-CARBONIFEROUS CORAL FAUNAS OF SVALBARD Summary The central part of west Spitsbergen and the Bear Island are the regions where coral faunas occurred longer than in the other (from Upper Bashkirian? to Upper Permian inclusively) and were most variable taxonomically. The Lower Permian strata (Asselian and/or Sakmarian) cov.er the time span of the best development and the widest geographical distribution of corals throughout the whole Arctic area. Very similar faunas identified from the Ural and Timan Mts., the Spitsbergen Archipelago and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago allowed the author to correlate the given faunas of individual stages and to consider the whole mentioned area the single palaeozoogeographical province. The territory of Alaska was distinctly separated from the Canadian Arctic Archipelago during Upper Carboniferous, but there two areas exchanged some faunas in Lower Permian. The Upper Permian coral fauna is impoverished within the whole area and its stratigraphic and other value is restricted. A lack of colonial forms of Rugosa and an occurrence of the cosmopolitan species Calophyllum profundum (Geinitz) are the main common characters of this fauna. The study of the rich coral fauna from the upper Treskelodden Beds in the Hornsund area served for the reconstruction of the original life habits of corals and the depositional environments of their present location. It has been stated that all the fauna was redeposited. The acting factors were of tectonic nature rather than climatological, as reconstructed by earlier workers.