Jurassic–Cretaceous radiolarian-bearing strata from the Gresten Klippen Zone and the St. Veit Klippen Zone (Wienerwald, Eastern Alps, Austria): Implications for stratigraphy and paleogeography

Two sections of the klippen zones in the Wienerwald area have been investigated for their stratigraphy: (1) The Gern section of the Main Klippen Zone, a part of the Gresten Klippen Zone, and (2) the St. Veit Klippen Zone in the Lainz Tunnel and the neighboring outcrops in western Vienna. New biostratigraphic data are based on radiolaria from siliceous intervals and a few findings of calcareous nannofossils from marlstones. In the Gresten Klippen Zone, radiolarian assemblages from limestones of the Gern locality indicate a middle Oxfordian to early Kimmeridgian age of the Scheibbsbach Formation.

Radiolarian and nannofossil data from the St. Veit Klippen Zone in the Lainz railway tunnel locality, as well as correlated outcrops from the Lainzer Tiergarten and the Gemeindeberg in the southwest of Vienna, indicate the presence of mainly Bajocian to lower Oxfordian red radiolarites and cherts (Rotenberg Formation). Siliceous, grey limestones and cherts of the Fasselgraben Formation range from the upper Oxfordian–Kimmeridgian to the Valanginian–Barremian.

The Main Klippen Zone was derived from the European margin to the north, and this zone is regarded as a Helvetic paleogeographic unit. The St. Veit Klippen Zone in the Lainz Tunnel section contains no ophiolitic material and shows a tectonic contact with the surrounding Rhenodanubian nappe system, which indicates no primary sedimentary contact of the St. Veit Klippen Zone with the Flysch units, as well as demonstrating the presence of two structurally separated Alpine tectonic units. Thus, a direct correlation with the Ybbsitz Zone is not supported, and an original paleogeographic position in the transition from the Penninic Ocean to the Austroalpine continental fragment is proposed.