The Dinantian (Mississippian) succession of southern Belgium and surrounding areas: stratigraphy improvement and inferred climate reconstruction

1. IntroductionAfter fundamental works such as those of de Dorlodot (1910) and Delepine (1911), the stratigraphy and the sedimentology of the Belgian Dinantian – a term better describing the Lower Carboniferous carbonate strata in western and central Europe than ‘Mississippian’ – were the subject of numerous papers during the 1960th and 1980th by various authors (Pirlet, Groessens, Bless, Bouckaert and others), mainly under the leadership of Raphael Conil. Especially the litho- and biostratigraphic work was summarized in two important synopses: Paproth et al. (1983) and Conil et al. (1991). In the first decade of this century, the older stratigraphic framework has been significantly revised and new basin-wide correlation schemes have been developed using bio-, chrono-, litho- and sequence stratigraphy – mainly in Hance et al. (2001, 2002, 2006), Poty et al. (2002a, 2006) and Devuyst (2006, for the Tournaisian – Visean boundary). These works led to a relatively coherent bio-, litho- and sequence stratigraphic model, which can be efficiently used in the Eurasia realm in shallow-water (e.g. Hance et al., 2011; Poty et al., 2007, 2014) and deeper water facies (e.g. Aretz, 2016, this volume; Herbig, 2016, this volume). This model also enabled the redefinition of the Belgian substages. Their boundaries can be correlated globally, which shows their high potential for further chronostratigraphic subdivision of the Carboniferous (Poty et al., 2014). Consequently, the Dinantian success