| Data: |
2025 |
| Resum: |
Characterizing the ecology of rudist bivalves has long proved challenging, given their baroque shell shapes and the inconvenience of their extinction. Contrasting interpretations have taken hold in the literature via two different approaches. On the one hand, the appealing but simplistic hypothesis of 'rudist reefs' based on analogy with Recent tropical coral reefs has been uncritically accepted by many, ignoring both the contrasts between the organisms concerned and the differing effects on sedimentation of icehouse versus greenhouse patterns of sea-level change. Worse, untested speculations have been spun on this suspect foundation, including the hypotheses of widespread photosymbiosis in rudists and of their competitive displacement of corals. On the other hand, opposed to such myth-making is an approach that respects the primacy of evidence. Here, synthetic interpretative models of rudist formations are built up from all circumstantial considerations and iteratively tested for compliance with field and laboratory observations. This process involves collating evidence ranging from wellsupported inferences concerning rudist and coral palaeobiology, and growth fabrics and sedimentological contexts, to larger scale reconstructions of facies anatomy. The picture that commonly emerges - in contrast to the classic actualistic barrier-reef model - is of opportunistic settlements of usually low relief on flat-topped, tabular-bedded platforms distally grading into flanking clinoforms, without distinct intervening reefal edifices. Opportunities to test such synthetic models are provided by exceptional outcrops that display the full panorama of facies relationships. The latter is one of many achievements of detailed field studies over many years by the 'Ramon Salas School' in the Maestrat Basin. |
| Drets: |
Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, sempre i quan aquestes es distribueixin sota la mateixa llicència que regula l'obra original i es reconegui l'autoria.  |
| Llengua: |
Anglès |
| Document: |
Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada |
| Matèria: |
Rudist formations ;
Organic reefs ;
Synthetic ecological models ;
Greenhouse world |
| Publicat a: |
Geologica acta, Vol. 23 (2025) , p. 1-22 (Carbonate successions from Iberia and the Caribbean - Homage to Ramon Salas) , ISSN 1696-5728 |
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