Calcareous Algae and Stromatolites

575 Pages·1991·16 MB·English

by  A. Pentecost (auth.)

Robert Riding (Ed.)
Calcareous Algae
and Stromatolites
With 16 Plates and 202 Figures
Springer-Verlag
Berlin Heidelberg New York London
Paris Tokyo Hong Kong Barcelona
Dr. ROBERf RIDING
University of Wales College of Cardiff
Cardiff CFt 3YE
United Kingdom
ISBN 978-3-642-52337-3 ISBN 978-3-642-52335-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-52335-9
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data. Calcareous algae and stromatolites / R.
Riding [editor). p. cm. Includes articles originally presented at the 4th International Symposium
on Fossil Algae, held in Cardiff, July 1987. Includes index.!. Algae, Fossil - Congresses.
2. Stromatolites - Congresses, I. Riding, Robert. II. International Symposium on Fossil Algae
(4th: 1987: Cardiff, Wales) QE955.C338 1990 561'.93 - dc20 90-10112
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Preface
"Calcareous algae and stromatolites" is shorthand for a wider array
of organisms and fabrics that also includes calcified cyanobacteria,
plus thrombolites and other microbial carbonates. Composition is the
link: these are all important components of CaC0 sediments, from
3
Archaean to present and from the ocean floor to streams and lakes.
It is hardly possible to examine limestones of any age without en
countering them. Simultaneously they are fossils, sediments, and en
vironmental indicators. It is the range of significance, coupled with
the breadth of their distribution in time and space, which compels
their study.
Modern calcareous marine algae mainly include reds (corallines,
squamariaceans, and the nemalialean Galaxaura) and greens (dasy
cladaleans, udoteaceans, halimedaceans). Blue-greens, of course, are
cyanobacteria and not algae, and significantly, although they are
largely responsible for Recent tidal flat stromatolites, they are not
calcified in the same way that pre-Cenozoic marine blue-greens are.
It is in the freshwater environment of calcareous streams and lakes
that we find modern calcified cyanobacteria, and they are commonly
associated with the only major group of non-marine calcareous algae,
the charophytes.
However, in the past, and especially in the Palaeozoic and
Mesozoic, things look radically different. Mingling with the ancestors
of the modern flora are distinct, and often problematic, organisms.
Their organization could be consistent with an algal or cyanobacterial
affinity, and they have been treated as such; but sometimes they hard
ly seem to fit conceptions founded in the Recent. This is another
world, and it informs and confuses at the same time.
Most reported calcareous "algae" in the Cambrian are actually
more likely to be cyanobacteria, and are especially important in reefs.
Never again, except briefly in the Upper Devonian, do these forms
assume such importance in marine environments. Dasycladaleans
and halimedacean-like greens, strikingly similar to Recent forms, ap
pear in the Ordovician. But any semblance of modernity is destroyed
by other newcomers which raise possibilities and problems for algal
evolution which are still unresolved. For the greens there are Ordovi
cian receptaculitids and cyclocrinitids to be considered, together with
Late Palaeozoic "green" phylloids, and also "erect udoteaceans",
VI Preface
which so often resemble cyanobacteria. For the reds there are Soleno
poraceae and Moniliporellaceae to be taken into account in the Mid
dle Palaeozoic, and these are augmented by "ancestral coralline" and
squamariacean-like phylloid algae, as well as by Gymnocodiaceae, in
the Late Palaeozoic. Along with these a host of more minor proble
matica, which for better or worse have been, entrusted to palaeolago
logists for study, create a systematists jungle in the Carboniferous and
Permian.
End-Palaeozoic extinctions failed to eliminate this disorder. Dur
ing the Mesozoic, despite dasycladalean diversification and the ap
pearance of coralline red algae, the undercurrent of problematic
forms is still evident, with bizarre newcomers mingling with survivors
from the Late Palaeozoic.
No less do stromatolites present problems and show dramatic
changes with time. The striking differences between Recent forms and
those of the Precambrian are often glossed over. More than most
other fossils, stromatolites exist at two levels in the minds of those
who study them. On the one hand, there are the tangible deposits:
laminated layers, domes, and columns which are fairly easy to discern
in isolation but whose clotted, spongy, sometimes filamentous,
micro fabrics also often, since the Early Cambrian, lurk obscurely in
skeletal reefs. On the other hand, there are the shifting dogmas of ex
planation: environment of origin (freshwater, intertidal, subtidal); mi
crobial community (cyanobacterial, bacterial, algal); process of for
mation (trapping and binding, calcification); reason for decline (ox
ygen levels, invertebrate grazing, coarse bioclastic sediment); reason
for survival (saline refuges and desiccated tidal flats). Descriptive em
phases have also varied: geometric or Linnean classifications, macro
structures or micro fabrics.
The problem with stromatolites is not their complexity, but their
simplicity. They offer so little to grasp. But, like Plautus's Pseudolus,
we so often seem to have overlooked the certainties while seeking
uncertainties. Stromatolites are just the tip of a microbial carbonate
iceberg: lamination varies and may disappear; there are gradations
between clotted and peloidal spongiostrome fabrics, porostromate
fabrics, and macroscopically clotted thrombolite fabrics; calcification
or cement encrustation of the microbes may radically alter the ap
pearance of the deposit. The clues have always been there in the car
bonate fabrics. The challenge is not only to correctly interpret them
but also to objectively and accurately describe them.
The incentive for this book came about because of the 4th Interna
tional Symposium on Fossil Algae, held at Cardiff in July 1987. But
I decided early on that there was much more need for an overview of
the subject as a whole, than for a compilation of conference papers.
Only just over half of the articles here were originally presented as
talks at the meeting, so this is not strictly a symposium volume.
Preface VII
Nevertheless, were it not for the stimulus of the Symposium this book
would not have appeared.
The title of the Fossil Algae Symposium is an overstatement. The
four meetings so far (Erlangen 1975, Paris 1979, Denver 1983, Cardiff
1987) have mainly attracted researchers interested in benthic calcified
algae, cyanobacteria, stromatolites, and other microbial carbonates.
But even within this much more limited area there is an enormous
variety of information and it is very scattered. Calcareous algae and
prokaryotes have yet to benefit from the kind of general synthetic
treatment applied to invertebrate fossils, on the one hand, and to vas
cular plant fossils, on the other.
Precisely because of this, it is worth trying to draw together a
review volume. I cannot claim to have achieved anything close to an
even, comprehensive coverage. What has emerged, however, does
demonstrate the breadth of the subject, the variety of approach, and
the state of the science at present. Despite omissions due to con
straints on length or non-availability of authors, this volume does in
clude discussions of major groups of algae and cyanobacteria,
stromatolites, and other microbial carbonates, of all ages, both extant
and extinct, marine and non-marine and, where appropriate, benthic
and planktonic.
I am very grateful indeed to the following colleagues who gener
ously helped by giving their time and expertise to referee manuscripts:
Stanley M. Awramik, Jack A. Babcock, Michael A. Borowitzka, Can
dace M. Brooke, Yvonne M. Chamberlain, Barrie Dale, Graham F.
Elliott, Monique Feist, Erik Flugel, Richard A. Fortey, Patrick Genot,
Nicole Grambast-Fessard, John R. Groves, Llewellya Hillis-Colin
vaux, Hans 1. Hofmann, David M. John, Andrew R. Leitch, Bernard
L. Mamet, Xi-nan Mu, Ernst Ott, Allan Pentecost, Katharina Perch
Nielsen, Brian R. Pratt, Alain Roux, Daniel Vachard, Malcolm R.
Walter, V. Paul Wright.
It is a pleasure to thank the authors for their willingness to con
tribute to this volume, and for their patience with my suggestions.
The skill and care of the staff of the Springer Geosciences editorial
office in Heidelberg brought the whole to fruition.
Cardiff, August 1990 ROBERI' RIDING
Contents
I Introduction...................................... 1
1 Calcification Processes in Algae and Cyanobacteria
A. Pentecost (with 4 Figures) ....................... 3
2 Classification of Microbial Carbonates
R. Riding (with 11 Figures) ......................... 21
II Major Groups .................................... 53
3 Calcified Cyanobacteria
R. Riding (with 15 Figures) ......................... 55
4 The Solenoporaceae: A General Point of View
A.-F. Poignant .................................... 88
5 Coralline Algae: Mineralization, 'Thxonomy, and
Palaeoecology
D. W. J. Bosence (with 3 Figures) .................... 98
6 Cyclocrinitids
S. C. Beadle (with 4 Figures) ........................ 114
7 Dasycladalean Algae of the Palaeozoic and Mesozoic
G. F. Elliott ....................................... 125
8 Cenozoic and Recent Dasycladales
P. Genot (with 43 Figures) .. . . ... . . . .. .. .... . . . . . . .. 131
9 Fossil Udoteaceae and Gymnocodiaceae
x.
Mu (with I Plate and 3 Figures) .................. 146
10 Recent Calcified Halimedaceae
L. Hillis (with 12 Figures) .......................... 167
11 The Genus Concept in Charophyta: Evidence from
Palaeozoic to Recent
M. Feist and N. Grambast-Fessard (with 6 Figures) 189
12 Calcification of the Charophyte Oosporangium
A. R. Leitch (with I Plate and 2 Figures) ............. 204
13 Calcareous Nannofossils
S.D. Houghton (with 19 Figures) .................... 217
14 Fossil Calcareous Dinoflagellate Cysts
H. Keupp (with 17 Figures) ......................... 267
x Contents
III Algae and StromatoUtes Through Time .............. 287
15 Archaean and Proterozoic Stromatolites
S. M. Awramik (with 7 Figures) ..................... 289
16 Cambrian Calcareous Cyanobacteria and Algae
R. Riding (with 6 Figures) .......................... 305
17 Ordovician Algae and Global Thctonics
A. Roux (with 5 Figures) ........................... 335
18 Ordovician to Devonian Marine Calcareous Algae
A. Roux (with 6 Figures) ........................... 349
19 Carboniferous Calcareous Algae
B. Mamet (with III Plates and 3 Figures) ............. 370
20 Permian Marine Calcareous Algae
R. Riding and L. Guo (with 22 Figures) ............. , 452
21 Triassic and Jurassic Marine Calcareous Algae:
A Critical Review
E. Flugel (with 8 Figures) .......................... 481
22 Mesozoic and Cenozoic Marine Benthic Calcareous
Algae with Particular Regard to Mesozoic
Dasycladaleans
F. Barattolo (with VII Plates and 6 Figures) .......... 504
23 Modern Stromatolites: A Review
S. Golubic (with II Plates) .......................... 541
Index ................................................ 563
List of Contributors
Awramik, S. M. 289 Hillis, L. 167
Barattolo, F. 504 Houghton, S. D. 217
Beadle, S. C. 114 Keupp, H. 267
Bosence, D. W. J. 98 Leitch, A. R. 204
Elliott, G. F. 125 Mamet, B. 370
Feist, M. 189 Mu X. 146
Flugel, E. 481 Pentecost, A. 3
Genot, P. 131 Poignant, A.-F. 88
Golubic, S. 541 Riding, R. 21, 55, 305, 452
Grambast-Fessard, N. 189 Roux, A. 335, 349
Guo L. 452
1 Introduction