This award will support Drs. Paul D. Fullagar and Timothy J. Bralower, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in collaboration with Maria Lorente, and Eglee J. Zapata, Universidad Central de Venezuela, for a study to determine the strontium- and carbon-isotope stratigraphy for La Luna Formation, a major source of petroleum in Venezuela. The proposal plans to provide a chemostratigraphy framework (based on strontium and carbon isotopes) that would allow correlation of La Luna Formation sections in Venezuela, and thus a better understanding of its environment of deposition and the accumulation of these organic carbon-rich deposits.
This stratigraphy will be an integral part of a nearly completed biostratigraphic-chemostratigraphic age model for the formation. The investigation will enhance our understanding of the processes that control the accumulation of marine Cretaceous organic carbon-rich sediments (CORG) known as "black shales" deposits throughout earth history.
