Late Cretaceous marine incursion into central Africa

The Late Cretaceous global transgression is one of the best documented episodes of continental submergence events. The extent of transgression of the Neotethys Ocean into the African continent is generally thought to be limited to north Africa. Here, we describe transgression traces in the Muglad Basin in central Africa that indicate a greater spatial extend of the Neotethys during the late Cretaceous. A series of molecular markers detected in the Upper Cretaceous Santonian-Maastrichtian sediments of the Muglad Basin are typical for marine depositional conditions and differ from those in the typical lacustrine sediments of the Lower Cretaceous Barremian-Aptian. Combining the geological-geochemical implications of these markers with the paleogeographic, paleontological and lithological records, we propose that the Muglad Basin received intermittent marine inundations during the Santonian-Maastrichtian stages (86.3–66.0 Ma) and these special molecular markers are therefore the products of seawater incursion. Consequently, this study proposes that the transgression extent of the Neotethys Ocean into the African continent southern extended to the central Africa during the Late Cretaceous.