Contornitas calcáreas en el Cretácico terminal de Caravaca (Dominio Subbético). Implicaciones paleogeográficas

Abstract

This paper focuses on the deep marine carbonates of late Campanian to lower Maastricht!an age that crop out in the Subbetic Zone near Caravaca (Murcia province). Their sedimentological analysis allows to recognize a thick succession of dm-scale levels of calcareous "grainy" contourites alternating with fine-grained pelagites/hemipelagites. Those contourites, characterized by the abundance and variety of traction structures (horizontal and low angle bedding; cross-bedding, mud offshots, flaser bedding) together with other diagnostic features as internal erosive surfaces, inverse and normal grading at various scales, erosive bases, sharp top contacts), are interpreted as produced by bottom currents that were particularly intense during that time in the Betic basin, probably as a consequence of the onset of the contraction in the Mesozoic basins of Iberia. The Alpine convergence caused the closure in the latest Cretaceous of most former seaways (Pyrenean and Iberian basins) between the Atlantic and the Tethys oceans, and induced the progressive narrowing of the remaining seaway between Africa and Iberia.