ABSTRACT The Cretaceous and Paleogene pelagic limestone and marl formations of the Umbria-Marche Apennines of north-central Italy have proven to be exceptional recorders of the history of Earth and of life on Earth, and they have been the subject of numerous geological and paleontological studies over the last several decades. Founded a quarter century ago, in 1992, the Geological Observatory of Coldigioco is a research and teaching center focused on these exceptional rocks. This chapter is a historical introduction that briefly reviews the highlights of the lithologic, biostratigraphic, sedimentologic, magnetostratigraphic, impact-stratigraphic, geochemical, geochronological, time-scale, and cyclostratigraphical research done on the Umbria-Marche stratigraphic sequence, much of it facilitated by the Geological Observatory of Coldigioco. This review covers work up to the Coldigioco 25th anniversary Penrose conference in September 2017; it does not treat work presented at that conference or done since then. A remarkable irony is that a century ago, the Umbria-Marche Cretaceous–Paleogene sequence was so difficult to date that early work contained an error of ~35 m.y., but now there is a reasonable hope that this entire section may eventually be dated to an accuracy and precision of ~10,000 yr. This review begins with an homage to the little medieval city of Gubbio, its wild Festa dei Ceri, and its Bottaccione Gorge, where much of the research described here has been done. The review ends with three points of perspective. The first is the notion that sometimes geology can be done by looking up at the sky, and astronomy can be done by looking down at Earth, with much of the Coldigioco-based research being of this latter kind. The second is the observation that geology and paleontology are contributing far more new information to Big History—to our integrated knowledge of the past—than any other historical field in the humanities or sciences. The third is that three of the major scientific revolutions of geology in the twentieth century have direct connections to the Umbria-Marche stratigraphic sequence—the turbidite revolution, the development of plate tectonics, and the downfall of strict uniformitarianism.

ABSTRACT Dating detrital zircon grains from sands and sandstones has become an important geological technique for determining sediment provenance and dispersal patterns. Here, we report what we believe to be the first provenance study of zircon grains extracted by dissolving large samples of pelagic limestone. Our samples come from the Paleocene section of the Umbria-Marche Apennines, Italy. Recovery of these zircon grains was a fortunate by-product of a study on chromite grains aimed to determine the kinds of meteorites that have fallen on Earth through time. The zircons we recovered included both euhedral crystals interpreted as airborne ash from volcanic eruptions of the same age as the sediment in which they were found, and rounded grains interpreted as windblown detrital material with a history of sediment transport, probably derived from desert regions. This study focuses on the rounded grains, to provide constraints on the source region from which they came. Samples from five levels in the 12 m immediately above the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary at Gubbio, Italy, yielded detrital zircon grains with ages clustered in eight bands extending back to the Neoarchean. A previous study of this outcrop using proxies for the noncarbonate detrital content had suggested a source region for this dust either in North Africa or in Central Asia. A comparison of our dates from the actual dust grains to geochronological studies from the literature suggests source regions in North Africa and/or the Iberian Peninsula, rather than in Central Asia. In reaching this conclusion, we considered the orogenic events that may have produced each of the eight age bands, the specific source regions that may have supplied zircons from each age group, and the implications for paleoclimate (especially aridity) and paleowind conditions for the few million years just after the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary.

ABSTRACT We reconstructed a record of the micrometeorite flux in the Late Cretaceous using the distribution of extraterrestrial spinel grains across an ~2 m.y. interval of elevated 3 He in the Turonian Stage (ca. 92–90 Ma). From ~30 m of the limestone succession in the Bottaccione section, Italy, a total of 979 kg of rock from levels below and within the 3 He excursion yielded 603 spinel grains (32–355 μm size). Of those, 115 represent equilibrated ordinary chondritic chromite (EC). Within the 3 He excursion, there is no change in the number of EC grains per kilogram of sediment, but H-chondritic grains dominate over L and LL grains (70%, 27%, and 3%), contrary to the interval before the excursion, where the relation between the three groups (50%, 44%, and 6%) is similar to today and to the Early Cretaceous. Intriguingly, within the 3 He anomaly, there is also a factor-of-five increase of vanadium-rich chrome spinels likely originating from achondritic and unequilibrated ordinary chondritic meteorites. The 3 He anomaly has an unusually spiky and temporal progression not readily explained by present models for delivery of extraterrestrial dust to Earth. Previous suggestions of a relation to a comet or asteroid shower possibly associated with dust-producing lunar impacts are not supported by our data. Instead, the spinel data preliminary indicate a more general disturbance of the asteroid belt, where different parent bodies or source regions of micrometeorites were affected at the same time. More spinel grains need to be recovered and more oxygen isotopic analyses of grains are required to resolve the origin of the 3 He anomaly.

ABSTRACT What causes recurrent mass extinctions of life? We find that the ages of 10 of the 11 well-documented extinction episodes of the last 260 m.y. show correlations, at very high confidence (>99.99%), with the ages of the largest impact craters or the ages of massive continental flood-basalt eruptions. The four largest craters (≥100 km diameter, impact energies ≥3 × 10 7 Mt trinitrotoluene [TNT]) can be linked with recognized extinction events at 36, 66, 145, and 215 Ma, and with stratigraphic distal impact debris correlative with the extinctions. The ages of 7 out of 11 major flood-basalt episodes can be correlated with extinction events at 66, 94, ca. 120, 183, 201, 252, and 260 Ma. All seven flood-basalt–extinction co-events have coincident volcanogenic mercury anomalies in the stratigraphic record, closely linking the extinctions to the volcanism. Furthermore, the seven major periods of widespread anoxia in the oceans of the last 260 m.y. are significantly correlated (>99.99%) with the ages of the flood-basalt–extinction events, supporting a causal connection through volcanism-induced climate warming. Over Phanerozoic time (the last 541 m.y.), the six “major” mass extinctions (≥40% extinction of marine genera) are all correlated with the ages of flood-basalt episodes, and stratigraphically with related volcanogenic mercury anomalies. In only one case, the end of the Cretaceous (66 Ma), is there an apparent coincidence of a “major” mass-extinction event with both a very large crater (Chicxulub) and a continental flood-basalt eruption (the Deccan Traps). The highly significant correlations indicate that extinction episodes are typically related to severe environmental crises produced by the largest impacts and by periods of flood-basalt volcanism. About 50% of the impacts of the past 260 m.y. seem to have occurred in clusters, supporting a picture of brief pulses of increased comet or asteroid flux. The largest craters tend to fall within these age clusters. Cross-wavelet transform analyses of the ages of impact craters and extinction events show a common, strong ~26 m.y. cycle, with the most recent phase of the cycle at ~12 Ma, correlating with a minor extinction event at 11.6 Ma. The stream of life flows so slowly that the imagination fails to grasp the immensity of time required for its passage, but like many another stream it pulses irregularly as it flows. There are times of quickening, the expression points of evolution, which are almost invariably coincident with some great geologic change, and the correspondence so exact and so frequent that the laws of chance may not be invoked by way of explanation. —Richard Swann Lull ( Organic Evolution , New York, Macmillan, 1929, p. 693)

ABSTRACT The earliest Pleistocene fossil forest of Dunarobba (Umbria, Italy) consists of a set of more than 70 tree trunks of an extinct species of sequoia or cypress with original cellulose still preserved. Spectral analyses of tree-ring series (325 and 448 yr in duration) combined with oxygen isotope analyses of the cellulose provide a glimpse into the mean annual temperature and the interannual climate variability that characterized this region at the beginning of the Pleistocene, when the concentration of atmospheric CO 2 was ~400 ppm. The high-frequency variability of the ring width time series shows significant spectral components that are consistent with the influence from the North Atlantic Oscillation, and to a lesser extent, solar cycles and El Niño–Southern Oscillation. The mean annual temperature estimate of ~19 °C, based on a model that combines ring widths and oxygen isotope values, is a full 6 °C warmer than the present-day value for this region. These elevated temperatures are consistent with estimates from pollen analyses and with estimates from higher latitudes.

The Bottaccione Gorge at Gubbio, Italy, a source of many discoveries in Earth history, was first recognized as an outstanding geological section by Guido Bonarelli (1871–1951). Bonarelli is remembered today mainly for the meter-thick Bonarelli Level, the local manifestation of oceanic anoxic event 2 (OAE 2), which he first recognized and described. Setting aside Bonarelli’s long and distinguished career as a petroleum geologist in Borneo and Argentina, this paper concentrates on his role in the long and difficult effort to date the Scaglia rossa pelagic limestone of the Bottaccione Gorge and the surrounding Umbria-Marche Apennines. Old photographs show a barren Bottaccione Gorge a century ago; Bonarelli apparently had much better outcrops than we do today, after reforestation shortly before the middle of the twentieth century. In the absence of macrofossils, and with the inability to extract isolated foraminifera from these hard limestones, the Scaglia was dated indirectly in the late nineteenth century, and believed to be entirely of Cretaceous age, implying errors as great as 40 m.y. We can now understand why this dating seemed satisfactory at the time, because it did not conflict with Charles Lyell’s view that there should be a huge hiatus corresponding to a major faunal overturn like the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary, and because thrust faulting that contradicted it had not yet been discovered. The K-Pg boundary was correctly placed within the Scaglia in 1936 when Otto Renz identified the foraminifera in thin section. Renz wrote with pleasure of a field trip with Bonarelli, who later presented Renz’s new dating to the Società Geologica Italiana on a 1940 field trip to Gubbio. These two are the predecessors of all the geologists who have worked in the Bottaccione Gorge since the Second World War.

The doctoral thesis of Otto Renz on the Scaglia in the Central Apennines, published in 1936, led the foundation for the enduring fame of the region of Gubbio, Italy, as a special place to study the geohistory of the Cretaceous and the Paleogene.

Soft-sediment deformation structures crop out in the Lower Cretaceous succession of the Gubbio anticline in the Umbria-Marche Apennines of Italy. The deformation interval is ~13 m thick and occurs between the upper Hauterivian–lower Aptian Maiolica Formation and the Aptian Marne a Fucoidi Formation. It can be observed along the anticline for a distance of 12 km. Different types of deformation structures are distributed in several outcrops, with detachment extensional structures prevailing in the southeast sector. Imbricated slides, slump structures, and chaotic layers are distributed vertically and longitudinally in the middle and/or lower part of the deformed sediments. In the northwest sector of the anticline, compressional duplex structures can be considered the lower section of a large sediment failure. Geometrical and kinematic analysis of the fold axis trends and sliding surfaces have led to infer a single, large gravitational event possibly Albian in age. The synsedimentary deformation could be activated by several internal trigger mechanisms induced by external regional tectonic events such as earthquakes. An orthogonal system of calcite veins crossing the limestone layers represents the primary pathway for fluid-driven breaching of joint seals. These fluids can be related to the significant increase in the total organic carbon in the Hauterivian–Aptian layer of the Maiolica and Marne a Fucoidi Formations. This suggests the possibility that the limestone layer, sandwiched and sealed between clay of the organic-rich black shales, could have favored a pore pressure increase approaching lithostatic stress. With a thin overburden, lithostatic stress is more easily reached at low hydrostatic pressure. This slump sheet occurrence suggests the existence of a local paleoslope dipping toward the north-northwest, where the mass involved in the deformation is distributed over an estimated area of 60 km 2 for a volume of 0.8 km 3 of displaced sediments. The restoration and rotation of the slump fold hinges to the Early Cretaceous direction, in line with available paleomagnetic data, have shown that the strike of the slope corresponds to the main trend of the oldest Jurassic extensional lineaments and is linked to transform faults of the westernmost Tethys rifting systems.

The highest stages of the stratigraphic range of the planktonic foraminiferal Rotalipora cushmani were investigated in a 313-k.y.-long interval of the classical Tethyan Bottaccione section (Gubbio, Italy), the type locality of the C org- rich Bonarelli Level, which is the sedimentary expression of the worldwide latest Cenomanian oceanic anoxic event 2 (OAE 2).The disappearance of R. cushmani is associated with the major turnover of marine microfauna and microflora that involves both planktonic and benthic foraminifera, and calcareous nannofossils, slightly before the onset of OAE 2, which, according to current available data, was triggered by a massive pulse of submarine mafic volcanism accompanying the initial emplacement of the Caribbean large igneous province (CLIP). This pulse of volcanic activity probably turned the climate in a strengthened greenhouse mode, accelerating continental weathering and increasing nutrient supply in oceanic surface waters via river runoff and triggering higher fertility in the global ocean. Our investigation shows that the marine biotic turnover started ~55 k.y. before the onset of OAE 2 and is closely coeval with the first major episode, as recorded by the unradiogenic trend in 187 Os/ 188 Os, of the ongoing magmatic activity of the CLIP, which produced increasing p CO 2 , ocean dissolution and/or acidification with a severe carbonate crisis and fertilization through enormous quantities of biolimiting metals. The marine microfauna and microflora reacted rapidly to new conditions of higher p CO 2 and fertility by undergoing marked changes following three main steps. We evaluate this pattern and postulate that the first pulse of volcanogenic CO 2 from the CLIP emplacement (ca. 94.2 or 94.6 Ma) played a fundamental role in the marine biotic turnover recorded shortly before the onset of OAE 2 and notably in the local or regional disappearance of R. cushmani in the central-western Tethys.

A bed by bed analysis of the Bonarelli Level (late Cenomanian) in the Bottaccione Gorge and the Contessa Valley (Gubbio, Italy, area) reveals ichnofabric variations that follow lithofacies changes. Ichnofabric analysis has been approached in ~60 samples for every section, using thin sections of rocks and wet cut surfaces for three-dimensional observations. The ichnofabric includes five ichnotaxa: Chondrites isp., Planolites isp., Thalassinoides isp., Trichichnus linearis , and Zoophycos isp.; their abundance and preservation fluctuate with the substrate consistency, oxygen content, and productivity. The ichnotaxa are absent in many beds that show primary lamination and were deposited under true anoxic conditions, but it is surprising that they are present in many thin beds inside the Bonarelli interval (10 in Bottaccione and 14 in Contessa). In the underlying and overlying Scaglia Bianca (late Cenomanian) carbonate deposits, the presence of a totally bioturbated background, together with superimposed discrete trace fossils (the same ichnotaxa as in the Bonarelli Level), reveals the absence of anoxic conditions (except for cherty layers), but the presence of minor fluctuations between aerobic and slightly dysaerobic conditions is marked by changes in ichnotaxa abundance.

Based on its completeness, the Bottaccione-Contessa composite section (BCCS; Gubbio area, Italy) has been analyzed to infer the paleobathymetry throughout the interval spanning the uppermost Albian to the lower Danian. Foraminifera are generally abundant and well preserved and the assemblages are dominated by planktonic foraminifera (planktonic/benthic ratio > 99%). The investigation of the benthic foraminiferal assemblages allows us to infer a lower bathyal depositional environment along most of the BCCS. A somewhat shallower deposition paleodepth is estimated for the Danian part of the BCCS, although this difference could be ascribed to the post–Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary effect. This study further enhances the application potential of benthic foraminiferal assemblages as a paleobathymetric proxy.

We studied a high-resolution multiproxy data set, including magnetic susceptibility (MS), CaCO 3 content, and stable isotopes (δ 18 O and δ 13 C), from the stratigraphic interval covering the uppermost Maastrichtian and the lower Danian, represented by the pelagic limestones of the Scaglia Rossa Formation continuously exposed in the classic sections of the Bottaccione Gorge and the Contessa Highway near Gubbio, Italy. Variations in all the proxy series are periodic and reflect astronomically forced climate changes (i.e., Milankovitch cycles). In particular, the MS proxy reflects variations in the terrigenous dust input in this pelagic, deep-marine environment. We speculate that the dust is mainly eolian in origin and that the availability and transport of dust are influenced by variations in the vegetation cover on the Maastrichtian-Paleocene African or Asian zone, which were respectively located at tropical to subtropical latitudes to the south or far to the east of the western Tethyan Umbria-Marche Basin, and were characterized by monsoonal circulation. The dynamics of monsoonal circulation are known to be strongly dependent on precession-driven and obliquity-driven changes in insolation. We propose that a threshold mechanism in the vegetation coverage may explain eccentricity-related periodicities in the terrigenous eolian dust input. Other mechanisms, both oceanic and terrestrial, that depend on the precession amplitude modulated by eccentricity, can be evoked together with the variation of dust influx in the western Tethys to explain the detected eccentricity periodicity in the δ 13 C record. Our interpretations of the δ 18 O and MS records suggest a warming event ~400 k.y. prior to the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary, and a period of climatic and environmental instability in the earliest Danian. Based on these multiproxy phase relationships, we propose an astronomical tuning for these sections; this leads us to an estimate of the timing and duration of several late Maastrichtian and Danian biostratigraphic and magnetostratigraphic events.