Temperate carbonates and mixed siliciclastics‐carbonates of Upper Tortonian age were deposited on a narrow platform along the southeastern margin of the Sierra de los Filabres on the western side of the Vera Basin. The temperate carbonates were unlithified or were only weakly lithified on the seafloor and so were easily prone to synsedimentary removal. Part of the shelf sediments were eroded, reworked and redeposited in submarine lobes, up to 40 m thick and 1 km wide. The lobes consist of turbiditic carbonates (calcarenites and calcirudites) and mixed siliciclastics‐carbonates, which contain up to 30% siliciclasts, derived from the Sierra de los Filabres to the northwest, and abundant bioclasts of coralline algae, bivalves and bryozoans. In the inner platform, the feeder channels of the lobes cross‐cut beach and shoal deposits, and are filled by strings of debris flow conglomerates (up to 3 m thick and a few metres wide). These channels presumably developed as the continuation of river courses entering the sea. Further towards the outer platform, they pass into large channels (up to several hundred metres wide and 20 m deep) steeply cutting into the horizontally bedded strata of the platform. Significant quantities of platform sediment were removed by erosion during their excavation. Once abandoned, they were filled by new platform sediments. Further towards the basin, the channels associated with the lobes exhibit lateral accretion and internal cut‐and‐fill structures, and are intercalated between hemipelagic deposits. The channel‐filling sediments are in this latter case coarse‐grained carbonates and mixed siliciclastics‐carbonates. Lobe development concentrated first at Cortijo Grande on the western side of the study area, and then to the east at Mojácar. This migration may relate to the uplift of the Sierra Cabrera, a major high occurring immediately to the south of the channel and lobe outcrops.

The Rock of Gibraltar comprises two tectonically separated limbs of an isolated klippe of Liassic Gibraltar Limestone Formation. Both limbs have similar, c.  400 m thick sequences of inner carbonate platform facies arranged in high‐frequency, metre‐scale, shallowing‐upward, peritidal cycles with emergent, caliche caps. Four cycle types are recognized on the basis of vertically repeated successions of different sedimentary structures, lithologies, facies and biota. When compared with other Liassic cycles from fault‐bound platforms of the western Mediterranean region all are found to be of similar scale, facies and cycle type. Likely common origins are through Milankovitch band allocyclicity, or autocyclic tidal flat progradation superimposed on regional subsidence. Within the Gibraltar Limestone high‐frequency cycles are superimposed on a low‐frequency (third order?) cyclicity that is revealed, through the use of Fischer plots, to control the occurrrence of facies, biota, high‐frequency cycle types and dolomitization. Falling sea‐level and lowstand phases, with reduced accommodation space, are typified by restricted, inner platform facies and cycles and by early reflux dolomitization. Transgressive and highstand phases, with more accommodation space, are characterized by the absence of early dolomites, the incoming of inner platform microfossils (i.e. foraminifera and calcareous algae) and by less restricted marine facies (i.e. oncoids, shelly rudstones, packstones and grainstones). Fischer plots have demonstrable value in the correlation and analysis of tectonically separated and geographically isolated cyclic sequences that lack prominent marker beds or stratigraphically useful biotas.

The Late Miocene Sorbas Member of the Sorbas Basin, Almería Province, southeast Spain contains an extensive avian ichnofauna preserved in lagoonal marls. Three distinctive avian ichnotaxa can be identified: Antarctichnus fuenzalidae Covacevich and Lamperein, 1970; Iranipeda millumi n. ichnosp.; and Roepichnus grahami n. ichnogen, n. ichnosp. In common with many other Cenozoic avian ichnofaunas, these traces are associated with shorebirds, including plovers, storks, ducks and/or gulls, respectively. Associated mammalian tracks include possible cat and artiodactyl footprints. The avian tracks are abundant and show a range of behavioural aspects in common with other recorded examples of Cretaceous-Recent shorebird tracks. These include both solitary and group activities consistent with their postulated avian tracemakers. The shorebird ichnofacies 531 Figure 14. Map of track-bearing surface one, 1.16 m below the base of the third sandstone, Mécanico Ertoil section, Sorbas Member, Sorbas, Almería, southeast Spain. (a) Map of trackways showing Roepichnus, Iranipeda and the artiodactyl Pecoripeda. The surface is extensively desiccated. (b) Map with desiccation cracks removed, showing behavioural types I and III. Vectors indicate several individuals on a track fairway (behaviour type II).

No abstract