Diversity, palaeoecology and systematics of a marine fossil assemblage from the Late Triassic Cassian Formation at Settsass Scharte, N Italy

A marine fossil assemblage from the Late Triassic (Early Carnian) Cassian Formation is reported. It was retrieved by bulk sampling, including wet sieving and quantitative picking, and by quantitative surface collection. The collection consists of c. 460 specimens (foraminiferans not included) representing 54 species. In terms of abundance and species richness, it is strongly dominated by molluscs, especially gastropods. 97 % of the individuals are molluscs. The most abundant species are the gastropods Goniospira armata, Schartia carinata and Helenostylina convexa, followed by the scaphopod Plagioglypta undulata and the bivalve Palaeonucula strigilata. Disarticulated echinoderm ossicles (mostly echinoids, crinoids, few holothurians) comprise almost all of the rest of the assemblage. The studied assemblage shows moderate diversity, similar to those of previously reported assemblages or associations from basinal settings. However, it differs considerably in taxonomic composition from previously described associations of the Cassian Formation. The abundance of small gastropods is a result of their primary abundance in these ancient living communities and of the sampling method (sieving at 0.5 mm), because most of the previous associations were obtained by performing surface collections, in which small gastropods are easily overlooked. The fauna is interpreted as an autochthonous soft bottom assemblage dominated by species that lived in low epifaunal to shallow infaunal habitats. Detritivory, deposit feeding and microcarnivory represent the main feeding types. Most of the species were fully motile but slow, and either infaunal (scaphopods, nuculids, the gastropod Domerionina) or epifaunal (most other gastropods, echinoids). The present assemblage underlines the pronounced heterogeneity of the Cassian biota. The low grade of lithification and diagenetic alteration facilitates bulk sampling and the investigation of small species. This minimizes possible sampling and preservation biases, so the studied assemblage reflects the alpha diversity of this ancient living community to an unusually high degree. The following gastropod taxa are new: Helenostylina convexa n. sp., Schartia carinata n. gen. n. sp., Schartiinae n. subfam.; Cassianastraea Bandel non Volz is replaced with Bandelastraea nom. nov.