Annual Report 2008 of the Bartonian/Priabonian Boundary Stratotype Working Group

Tasks of the Italian scientific community were to search for GSSPs of the Middle-Upper Eocene and Lower-Upper Oligocene Transitions. Investigations on both transitions have been undertaken by a number of researchers from several Italian Universities (i.e. Padua, Ferrara, Florence, Urbino, Milan) and CNR Institutes as well as from some European and USA Universities and Institutions of the “ALANO NET” and by the numerous scientists of the OLIS Working Group coordinated by Rio (University of Padua) and Coccioni (University of Urbino), respectively.
During 2008 studies on the Alano di Piave section (Veneto region, NE Italy), the potential candidate for defining the GSSP of the Middle/Upper Eocene, equated to the base of the Priabonian Stage, are basically completed. Calcareous plankton (nannofossils and foraminifera) high-resolution quantitative biostratigraphies are now well correlated to magnetostratigraphy and to oxygen and carbon stable isotopes across the critical interval. Dinocyst biostratigraphical and benthic foraminiferal studies are close to completion. A paper on integrated multiple stratigraphies of the Alano di Piave section is in progress and should be submitted soon for publication.

Report by Isabella Premoli Silva, Chairwoman