The Stratigraphic Record of Gubbio

Book excerpt: Since the beginning of the last century, the lower Jurassic to mid-Miocene pelagic succession exposed along the valleys of the Umbria and Marche Apennines of Italy represented a fertile playground for generations of earth scientists. This GSA Special Paper provides a reappraisal of the geological and integrated stratigraphic research, which was carried out by scores of earth scientists in the gorges around the medieval city of Gubbio over the past fifty years. Following review chapters about pioneering sedimentologic, biostratigraphic, and magnetostratigraphic studies of the Gubbio sections, a series of papers presents new, original data addressing different stratigraphical, paleoenvironmental, and structural geological aspects of particular Cretaceous to Paleogene intervals, including the still much-debated K-Pg Boundary Event in the worldwide famous site of the Bottaccione Gorge, where the Alvarez theory of global mass extinction caused by a catastrophic extraterrestrial impact was born in 1980.