Comment on “Tectonic and environmental factors controlling on the evolution of Oligo-Miocene shallow marine carbonate factories along a tropical SE Circum-Caribbean” by Silva-Tamayo et al. (2017)

Abstract

Silva-Tamayo et al. (2017) study the Chattian to Langhian carbonate succession of the Siamana Formation in the Cocinetas Basin (La Guajira, Colombia). They identify a change in carbonate factory from mixed photozoan-heterozoan and photozoan associations dominated by corals in the Chattian-early Burdigalian to a heterozoan rhodalgal association in the late Burdigalian-Langhian.To validate the regional scale of this shift in carbonate-producing biota along the southeastern Circum-Caribbean realm, Silva-Tamayo et al. compare the Siamana Formation with the San Luis carbonate succession in the Falcón Basin (NE Venezuela) and the Perla carbonates in the Urumaco Trough (Gulf of Venezuela). Referring to Albert-Villanueva (2016) they state that, as in the case of the Siamana Formation, the carbonates of the San Luis Formation also recorded a change in carbonate-producing biota, from a photozoan/heterozoan carbonate factory in the late Oligoceneearly Miocene to a heterozoan/rhodalgal carbonate factory in the middle Miocene. Notwithstanding, Albert-Villanueva (2016) interprets the carbonate units cropping out in the Falcón Basin (San Luis

Stratigraphic evolution and carbonate factory implications: Case study of the Albian carbonates of the Campos Basin, Brazil

“…One of the persistent doubts concerns factory transitions, which are often arbitrarily delimited based on theoretical models (Schlager, 2000). Ancient deposits that show factory changes are infrequent (Albert-Villanueva et al, 2019;Wu et al, 2019) and such evidence in the geological record is therefore a topic of discussion.…”