PIs will conduct an interdisciplinary investigation, employing sedimentology, stratigraphy, paleontology, paleoecology, and geochemistry, all designed to determine the causes and effects of high-frequency sea-level changes in the Cenomanian-Turonian Western Interior Seaway of North America. Objectives are: 1) to confirm hypothesis that parasequences in the fine-grained, offshore facies record processes of at least regional extent, 2) to determine how spatial changes in accommodation space and rate of sediment influx influenced development of sequences and parasequences during high-frequency relative sea-level changes, 3) to evaluate how, and by what mechanisms, benthic oxygenation levels at offshore sites varied in concert with high- frequency sea-level changes, and 4) to determine how water column characteristics varied over the course of such changes.
