Turbiditic and Pelagic Upper Cretaceous Oceanic Red Beds in the Romanian Carpathians

Upper Cretaceous Red Beds are widely distributed in the former Tethyan Realm, in the European, Asian and Central North Atlantic regions. This type of sedimentation followed in many regions the Lower Cretaceous Black Shales, indicating the replacement of an anoxic regime with an oxic one. For a better understanding of causes which produced such changes in deposition, the Upper Cretaceous Red Beds were intensively studied since 2002, by the participants in the IGCP-UNESCO Project 463-Upper Cretaceous Oceanic Red Beds: Response to Ocean/Climate Change (CORB). The Third Workshop of this Project was held in Romania in 2004, the one-day conference being followed by a three-day field trip in the Romanian Carpathians. Most of the investigated sections in the field are situated in the Bend Area of the Romanian Carpathians. Upper Cretaceous Red Beds from the above-mentioned region display various facies (pelagic/hemipelagic, turbiditic), covering the interval Cenomanian-Maastrichtian (including the K/T boundary interval). The causes which produce this type of sedimentation are various. Changes in geoechemical regime, in palaeoproductivity of surface waters as well as in palaeogeography were assumed to interact.