Paleoenvironmental and chronological constraints on the Mount Tatlow succession, British Columbia: first recognition of radiolarian and foraminiferal faunas in the Intermontane Cretaceous back-arc basins of western Canada1This article is one of a series of papers published in this Special Issue on the theme of New insights in Cordilleran Intermontane geoscience: reducing exploration risk in the mountain pine beetle-affected area, British Columbia.2Geological Survey of Canada Contribution 20100279.

The Cretaceous succession at Mount Tatlow, British Columbia, is a cornerstone of Cordilleran stratigraphy, preserving a mostly continuous record of upper Lower Cretaceous to lower Upper Cretaceous sedimentary strata. The succession is capped by volcanic strata of the Powell Creek formation. Lithofacies assemblages within the Mount Tatlow succession reflect sedimentation in a deep-water submarine fan system at the base of the section, to overlying submarine-fan and to pro-deltaic deposition, and, finally, to delta-plain sedimentation at the top of the succession. Radiolarian and foraminifer fossils from the lower part of the Mount Tatlow section are the first recovered from the Intermontane basins of British Columbia and indicate a middle Albian to Cenomanian age, most likely Cenomanian. The presence of these fossils indicates that open-marine conditions existed locally in the basin at this time, but the strongly altered and pyritized nature of the fauna suggests that a reducing environment fostered early diagenetic pyritization processes in the subsurface sediments. Detrital zircon populations collected from the succession are in agreement with the paleontological ages.