Microbialite-Vermetid Community Salento Peninsula (southern Italy): a Late Miocene Example of Automicrite Deposition.

A carbonate facies made up mainly of micrite and vermetid shells has been identified in the early Messinian coral reef complex of the Novaglie Formation on the Salento Peninsula of southern Italy. Vermetids (Mollusca, Prosobranchia, and Caenogastropoda) can form large colonies that are usually attached to hard substrates (Vescogni et al. 2008). The micrite-dominated facies with a large number of vermetid shells (most of them horizontal) is unusual. Moreover, this facies shows completely different sediment textures and organism compositions than the associated reefal carbonates. To explain the origin of this facies and identify the source of the micrites, field, microfacies and epifluorescence observations were carried out along with scanning electron microscopy (SEM), EDS and FT-IR analyses.