A lithofacies-coupled palynofacies model for meandering river floodplains in the Late Cretaceous: Insights from the Dinosaur Park Formation, Alberta, Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Alluvial floodplains accommodate various sub-environments that preserve evidence of fluvial dynamics, aiding in the reconstruction of terrestrial paleoenvironments . While floodplains serve as major sources and sinks for organic matter, characterizing sub-environments within ancient floodplains using fossil organic matter (kerogen) is sparsely applied due to its unclear relationship with organic matter dynamics in modern fluvial settings. This study develops a lithofacies-coupled palynofacies model for fluvial environments to address this gap and reveal organic matter dynamics in paleo-floodplains. The sedimentary successions of the Upper Cretaceous Dinosaur Park Formation in Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta, Canada, offer an ideal fluvial setting to develop this model, compare it across geological time intervals, and refine paleoenvironmental reconstructions of the Dinosaur Park Formation. A floodplain-dominated stratigraphic section of the Dinosaur Park Formation comprises six recurring lithofacies and two facies associations representing channel-belt and floodplain deposits. All observed kerogen assemblages originated from terrestrial environments. Channel-belt deposits are characterized by sandstones containing opaque and amorphous non-biostructured phytoclasts, as well as amorphous organic matter. Levee deposits are characterized by sandy mudstones , while proximal floodplains are characterized by gray mudstones. Despite these distinctions, kerogen assemblages are relatively similar and heterogeneous, with opaque phytoclasts remaining prevalent. Backswamps (carbonaceous mudstones and shales) and distal floodplain environments (brown mudstones) exhibit a high abundance of cuticles, membranes, sporomorphs and amorphous non-biostructured phytoclasts. Total organic carbon content discriminates between different sub-environments, with higher organic carbon content found in backswamp and distal floodplain environments. The results show that lithofacies and kerogen assemblages (i.e. palynofacies) in the Dinosaur Park Formation's floodplains were mainly influenced by channel proximity and floodplain topography. When compared with modern and deep-time fluvial examples, the model supports palynofacies analysis as a robust proxy for distinguishing floodplain sub-environments and demonstrating its applicability in understanding fluvial dynamics over geological timescales.
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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 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 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".