Questioning the microbial origin of automicrite in Ordovician calathid–demosponge carbonate mounds
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Calathid–demosponge carbonate mounds are a feature of Early to Middle Ordovician shallow‐marine carbonate depositional environments of tropical to subtropical palaeolatitudes. These mounds contain an important amount of autochthonous non‐skeletal microcrystalline calcium‐carbonate (automicrite) conventionally considered microbial in origin. Here, the automicrite of calathid–demosponge carbonate mounds (Tarim Basin, north‐west China) is broken down into five distinct fabrics: an in situ peloidal–spiculiferous fabric (AM‐1), an in situ peloidal fabric (AM‐2), an aphanitic–microtubular fabric (AM‐3), a minipeloidal fabric (AM‐4) and a laminoid–cerebroid fabric (AM‐5). Type AM‐1 occurs with AM‐2 being succeeded by an assemblage of AM‐3 and AM‐4. Types AM‐4 and AM‐5 are separated by an erosional disconformity. A good correlation of fluorescence and cathodoluminescence of automicrites indicates that induced and supported organomineralization produced automicrite, probably via the permineralization of non‐living organic substrates adsorbing dissolved metal–humate complexes. Using a spreadsheet with six parameters and 17 characters, AM‐1 to AM‐4 turn out to be non‐microbial in origin. Instead, these automicrites represent relics of calcified metazoan tissues, such as siliceous sponges, non‐spiculate sponges or the basal attachment structures of stalked invertebrates. Fabric AM‐5 is a microbial carbonate but is post‐mound in origin forming a drape within a reefal framework established by AM‐4. The five automicritic fabrics, individually or as an assemblage, are a common element of Ordovician calathid–demosponge carbonate mounds in general. The reassessment of the origins of these automicritic fabrics holds consequences for understanding of the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event in terms of community structure, reef ecology and reef evolution. Episodically, these fabrics are also present in other carbonate build‐ups stretching from the Neoproterozoic over the entire Phanerozoic Eon. The massive calcification of metazoan soft tissue (AM‐1 to AM‐4) characterizes episodes and conditions of enhanced marine calcification and might be of value to refine secular trends of pCO2, Ca concentration and Mg/Ca ratio at the scale of individual sedimentary basins.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".