Refinements in biostratigraphy, chronostratigraphy, and paleogeography of the Mississippian (Lower Carboniferous) Mobarak Formation, Alborz Mountains, Iran

Detailed sampling of limestones from the Mobarak Formation at the Abrendan and Abnak measured sections in the eastern and central Alborz Mountains, northern Iran, yielded a diverse assemblage of Tournaisian - Lower Visean (Mississippian/ Lower Carboniferous) calcareous microfossils (foraminifers, algae, incertae sedis). The Abrendan locality contains Tournaisian foraminifers in the upper part of the formation that correlate to the Ivorian and upper Courceyan - lower Chadian substages of western Europe and the Kosvinsky Horizon of the Russian Platform. Brachiopods confirm a Tournaisian age for the lower part of the Mobarak, which lacks age-diagnostic calcareous microfossils. Lower Visean foraminifers at Abnak provide good correlation to the western European Moliniacian and Arundian substages and the Russian Bobrikovsky Horizon. Synthesis of foraminiferal data from this and other published reports indicates that the top of the Mobarak Formation becomes increasingly older across the Alborz to the southeast, caused most likely by Pennsylvanian (Upper Carboniferous) exposure and erosion in the south followed by a latest Pennsylvanian - Early Permian transgression from the north. The microbiota at both sections and the macrofossils at Abrendan show close affinity to the warm-water Paleo-Tethyan Ocean, seemingly contradicting Early Mississippian paleomagnetic reconstructions placing the Alborz region at 45-50° South latitude. The discrepancy is not resolvable at this time, but the answer may lie in the circulation of Paleo-Tethyan currents to the south along the Gondwanan shelf, rather than to repositioning the Alborz region to the northern side of the Paleo-Tethyan Ocean.