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Abstract
Small shelly fossils (SSFs) are widely utilized for Cambrian biostratigraphy of shallow-water carbonates. The apparent linkage of SSFs to carbonate facies reflects an observational bias. Our study on the deeper siliceous facies of the Yangtze Craton in Zhejiang and Hunan provinces (China) reveals that SSFs also can be extracted from cherts. For this purpose a quick-etching method with weak hydrofluoric acid is applied. SSFs extracted from cherts are comparable with those from carbonates. Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy analyses indicate a primary composition of SSFs of organic carbon and apatite. Hydrofluoric acid-processing can provide valuable biostratigraphic data of SSFs that are complementary to standard methods.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to Jörg Maletz (Berlin) for linguistic improvement. This study was financed by the DFG (Grant STE 814/3-2) and the China Geological Survey (Grant G121911). BY is grateful for a scholarship from the China Scholarship Council (CSC) for his PhD study. LZ was funded by the ERASMUS MUNDUS program for 1 year at the University of Lille 1.