Home – Home – Jornals – Russian Geology and Geophysics 2001 number 4

Marine and oceanic carbonate accumulation in the Vendian-Cambrian was a biochemogenic process, i.e., was caused mainly by the vital activity of organisms that formed a geochemical environment favoring carbonate sedimentation. In the early Paleozoic, this process became completely biogenic. Later on, till the end of the Paleozoic, carbonates accumulated mainly in vast shelf seas, and in the Mesozoic, in ocean shoals, reefs, and pelagic zones. In the Cenozoic, pelagic zones and, to a lesser extent, reefs became the main accumulators of carbonates. It is shown that the carbonate accumulation process depended on the atmosphere composition.