Upper Cretaceous calcareous nannofossil biostratigraphy of the East European Platform: A proposed regional nannofossil zonation scheme and correlation with foraminifera and radiolarian zones

Abstract The Upper Cretaceous deposits are broadly distributed over the territory of the East European Platform (EEP), yet they cannot be reliably subdivided on the basis of the calcareous nannofossils using the existing global and provincial zonal schemes due to the rarity or absence of some index species in the East European palaeobiogeographic province. A new and original regional biostratigraphic scheme for the EEP is proposed, based on the analysis of the stratigraphic distribution of the calcareous nannofossils from the Moscow Basin, the Central Russian Upland and the Ulyanovsk–Saratov trough. The newly proposed scheme is compared and correlated to other Upper Cretaceous zonations for the EEP, based on foraminifera and radiolaria.