Agglutinated foraminifera from the Northern Tarcău Nappe (Eastern Carpathians, Romania)

The Tarcău Nappe is the most important unit of the Carpathian flysch due to its size, stratigraphic, and tectonic complexity. Our purpose was to identify the major types of foraminifera assemblages in relation to the paleoenvironmental settings and their biostratigraphic potential. The identified assemblages are characteristic to the Cretaceous and Paleogene, consisting mostly of benthic agglutinated and, in lower proportions, benthic calcareous and planktonic species. Local abundances of Glomospira specimens allowed the correlation of the examined strata to the early Eocene “Glomospira event” described from the Carpathians in Poland, Morocco, and Labrador. Rzehakina fissistomata (Grzybowski) identified at Palma makes possible the correlation of these deposits to the Paleocene Rzehakina fissistomata Zone. Paleoenvironmental conditions (depth, amount of oxygen, nutrients) could be inferred based on specific assemblages and compared to the already described types of facies from the Carpathians