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Conodont paleoecology of the Lower Ordovician St. George Group, Port au Port Peninsula, western Newfoundland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 May 2016

Zailiang Ji  and
Christopher R. Barnes
Zailiang Ji
Affiliation:
School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of Victoria, P.O. Box 1700, Victoria, British Columbia V8W 2Y2, Canada
Christopher R. Barnes
Affiliation:
School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of Victoria, P.O. Box 1700, Victoria, British Columbia V8W 2Y2, Canada
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Abstract

The St. George Group in western Newfoundland is nearly 600 m thick and is subdivided into the Watts Bight, Boat Harbour, Catoche, and Aguathuna Formations. The group is a nearly complete Lower Ordovician succession representing about 15–20 m.y. The depositional environment of the St. George Group is represented by three main lithofacies (supratidal, peritidal, and subtidal), expressed as two first-order cycles and five second-order cycles.

In the study of St. George Group conodonts, over 70 multielement species are represented in 45,000 conodont specimens from 432 samples of 10 sections. Computer cluster analysis of most of those samples on the basis of similarity of conodont species was used to determine conodont community structure. Both the principal coordinate analysis (PCA) partitioning method and the agglomerative method (UPGMA with Bray-Curtis) were chosen for the statistical analysis. The four lithological formations and five secondary lithological cycles in the St. George Group emerge as distinct entities when the samples are clustered together on the basis of conodont data for analysis of first-order and second-order variations in community composition.

Two deeper water, five shallow-water, and five intermediate communities through this time interval are recognized. The majority of conodonts from these communities are of Midcontinent Realm affinities, but some species represent strong North Atlantic Realm influxes during the transgressive periods.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Paleontology , Volume 68 , Issue 6 , November 1994 , pp. 1368 - 1383
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

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