Cretaceous benthic foraminifera in ODP sites of Leg 120

Over 200 species of benthic foraminifers are recorded from three Ocean Drilling Program sites on the Southern Kerguelen Plateau drilled during Leg 120. They represent environments of deposition from neritic to bathyal during the Cenomanian to Maestrichtian. Many species are left in open nomenclature.
Analysis of planktonic percentage, dominance/diversity, and comparison of faunal composition and structure shows that at all sites there is strong evidence of deepening water with time.
The sediments at Sites 747 and 750 accumulated dominantly in open-ocean conditions of generally bathyal depths, increasing with time. The deepest faunas may represent lower bathyal depths. At Site 748C, deposition began in marine conditions so shallow that there is no foraminiferal component at all and the environment may have been estuarine or salt marsh, in part with reducing conditions. After the Cenomanian/Turonian, conditions became more open marine, but waters were still very shallow so that planktonic percentage remains low.
Indexes other than foraminiferal suggest that the Kerguelen Plateau was vegetated through much of the Upper Cretaceous and that there may always have been islands or larger expanses of the plateau surface exposed.