U.S.-Senegal Cooperative Research: Early Cambrian Small Shelly Fossils Stratigraphy & Paleoenvironments in the Southwest Taoudeni Basin, West Africa

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This proposal requests funds to permit Dr. Stephen J. Culver, Department of Geological Sciences, Old Dominion University, and Dr. Ramzy Khatib, Department of Geology, University of Dakar, Senegal, to enhance, for a period of 24 months, their cooperation, presently supported in part under NSF Grant No. EAR-8816137, on early Cambrian small shelly fossils, stratigraphy, and paleoenvironments in the southwest Taoudeni Basin, West Africa. The paleontologic goal of extensive sample collecting was realized but the other goal of that project, the determination of paleoenvironments, was only partially achieved. The present project will provide support for additional field work by the collaborators and travel by Dr. Khatib to Old Dominion University (1) to undertake x-ray diffraction and radiographic analyses of samples and (2) to collaborate on results and interpretations. The project will add to our knowledge of the stratigraphy of the Paleozoic basins and fold belts in West Africa. It will refine our understanding of the distribution of earliest Cambrian schemes. The project also will result in interpretations of the environments in which these organisms lived, died, and accumulated as fossils. This project is relevant to the objectives of the Science in Developing Countries Program which seeks to increase the level of cooperation between U.S. scientists and engineers and their counterparts in developing countries through the exchange of scientific information, ideas, skills, and techniques and through collaboration on problems of mutual benefit.