Late Wenlock carbon isotope excursions and associated conodont fauna in the Podlasie Depression, eastern Poland: a not-so-big crisis?

The middle Silurian ‘big crisis’ refers to a graptolite extinction event and faunal turnover at the onset of a double-peaked positive carbon isotope excursion. The crisis has been proposed to affect conodonts, giving rise to a sophisticated palaeoecological model of their stepwise extinction, known as the Mulde Event. However, the impact of the event on conodont faunas outside Gotland and the Silurian Baltic Basin remains unknown. Here, it is examined in the Widowo IG-1 core (E Poland). The middle Silurian succession in this core represents foreshoal, shoal, and lagoonal settings on a tropical carbonate ramp on the shelf of the Eastern European Craton. Three positive δ13Ccarb excursions have been identified; the two upper excursions correlate with the Mulde isotope anomaly and with two global eustatic regressions. Conodont species proposed to be affected by the extinction event either were not observed or ranged through the extinction interval. Changes in their frequencies are best explained by the sequence stratigraphic architecture of the late Wenlock strata in the Widowo IG-1 core. The little impact of the ‘big crisis’ may reflect facies homogeneity across the studied interval, supporting the hypothesis that the late Wenlock conodont turnover in epicontinental settings was primarily driven by eustatically controlled facies shifts.