TITLE:
Hauterivian-Barremian Bivalves from the Boulouha Formation of the Dahar Escarpment, Southern Tunisia: Stratigraphy and Regional Correlation
AUTHORS:
Boukhalfa Kamel, Jingeng Sha, Soussi Mohamed, Gang Li, Ben Ali Walid, Ouaja Mohamed
KEYWORDS:
Bivalves, Hauterivian-Barremian, Boulouha Fm., Dahar Escarpment, Tunisia
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Geology,
Vol.9 No.10,
September
23,
2019
ABSTRACT: The Lower Cretaceous mixed siliciclastic-carbonate successions of the Boulouha Formation at the type locality in the Dahar escarpment of southern Tunisia have yielded a new discovered assemblage of bivalves which contains Anomia laevigata (Sowerby); Modiolus sp. cf. M. dahuashuensis (Yu et Li); Astarte sp.; and ?Mytilus sp.. The temporal distribution of the Anomia laevigata (Sowerby) and Modiolus sp. cf. M. dahuashuensis (Yu et Li) is limited to the Aptian formations of northeastern China, Japan and Korea, thus we suggest a Hauterivian-Barremian age for the Boulouha Formation. Henceforth, the new biostratigraphic data are used to improve a regional chronostratigraphic correlation between the lower Cretaceous strata of the Saharan Platform domain and those coeval from the Chotts domain.