ORIGINAL PAPER Life in the sublittoral zone of long-lived Lake Pannon: paleontological analysis of the Upper Miocene Szák Formation,

Abstract Life and depositional environments in the sub-littoral zone of Lake Pannon, a large, brackish Paratethyan lake from the Late Miocene, were reconstructed from fossils and facies of the Szák Formation. This formation is exposed in several, roughly coeval (9.4–8.9 Ma) outcrops, located along strike of the paleo-shelf-break in northwestern Hun-gary. The silty argillaceous marl of the formation was deposited below storm wave base, at 20–30 to 80–90 m water depth. The abundance of benthic organisms indicates that the bottom water was usually well oxygenated. Inter-stitial dysoxia, however, may have occurred immediately below the sediment–water interface, as evidenced by occa-sional preservation of trace fossils such as Diplocraterion. The fauna comprised endemic mollusks, including brackish cockles of the subfamily Lymnocardiinae, dreissenid mus