A simple technique to establish sequences of datums and to highlight transgressive–regressive cycles

The relative diachronism of first or last local occurrences (FOs and LOs) of fossil species may highlight transgressive/regressive cycles. A simple technique allowing the extraction of this information by means of the UAgraph program is discussed in the present paper. The technique consists in modifying a usual database of UAgraph by augmenting it with the restricted data concerning only the FOs (or LOs) of the taxa under consideration. The resulting data set combines the information on total ranges and those concerning the FOs and LOs only. Calculating the UAs of such a duplicated database produce a range chart in which we can read the maximal ranges of all the taxa and, in addition, the biochronological dispersion of the FOs and LOs. For a given transgressive/regressive cycle, the UAs defined by the species related to sea level fluctuations migrate with time from distal to proximal sections and inversely. This trend can be detected visually by the means of the UAs reproducibility chart, output of the UAgraph program. In a more general frame, the same holds true for species whose regional dispersion is related to specific conditions and when these conditions migrate in space with time (e.g., water temperatures and diatoms). The above discussion is strictly related to FOs and LOs that for a given section are definitive, however well constrained ephemeral appearances and disappearances can be easily integrated in the database for the same purposes.