Life in the sublittoral zone of long-lived Lake Pannon: paleontological analysis of the Upper Miocene Szák Formation, Hungary

Life and depositional environments in the sublittoral zone of Lake Pannon, a large, brackish Paratethyan lake from the Late Miocene, were reconstructed from fossils and facies of the Szak Formation. This formation is exposed in several, roughly coeval (9.4–8.9 Ma) outcrops, located along strike of the paleo-shelf-break in northwestern Hungary. The silty argillaceous marl of the formation was deposited below storm wave base, at 20–30 to 80–90 m water depth. The abundance of benthic organisms indicates that the bottom water was usually well oxygenated. Interstitial dysoxia, however, may have occurred immediately below the sediment–water interface, as evidenced by occasional preservation of trace fossils such as Diplocraterion. The fauna comprised endemic mollusks, including brackish cockles of the subfamily Lymnocardiinae, dreissenid mussels (Congeria), and highly adapted, uniquely large-sized deep-water pulmonate snails (planorbids and lymnaeids). Ostracods were dominated by endemic species and, in some cases, endemic genera of candonids, leptocytherids, cypridids, and loxoconchids. Fish remnants include a sciaenid otolith and the oldest skeletal occurrence of Perca in Europe. The phytoplankton comprised exclusively endemic coccolithophorids, mostly endemic dinoflagellates (prevailingly Spiniferites), and cosmopolitan green algae. The Late Miocene fauna and flora of Lake Pannon were in many ways similar to the modern Caspian biota, and in particular cases can be regarded as its precursor.