Cretaceous of the Western Tethys

In 1978, in Munster, the German Subcommission on Cretaceous Stratigraphy initiated a first International Symposium on the Cretaceous. The focus of the symposium was on Germany and Central Europe. The proceedings were published in 1979. The second symposium was held in 1982 in Munich and concentrated on the Alpine Cretaceous. The proceedings were published in 1983.

Published in this volume are proceedings of the third symposium, which took place in Tubingen in 1987 and whose topic was the western Tethys. The participants of the symposium unanimously decided to dedicate the volume published to TOVE BIRKELUND in response to the loss of our highly esteemed Danish colleague.

The great variety of topics presented during the Tubingen Symposium and offered in this volume can be grouped together in the following subjects: (A) The Western Mediterranean, including its transition to the North Atlantic; (B) The Alps, Carpathians, Dinarids, and Caucasus; (C) Cretaceous Events; (D) Biostratigraphy, Correlation, and Paleogeography, and (E) Vol-canism and Magnetostratigraphy. I hope that this diversity will be appreciated by the members of the Cretaceous community.

The completion of this volume was only possible with the continuous assistance of many colleagues contributing in different ways such as reviewing, re-typing, or re-drawing the present papers. I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to all of them, but above all to my friend FRANZ ALLEMANN (Bern), who was also responsible for the success of the symposium excursions, as well as to HANS J. HANSEN and WALTER K. CHRIS-TENSEN (both Copenhagen), BRAD SAGEMAN (now Boulder, CO), KAI-UWE GRAFE, JORG PROSS and WOLFGANG SCHWENTKE.

Costs of printing increase and financial support of proceedings such as this one become more and more difficult to obtain. I am deeply indebted to two organizations that contributed extensively to the printing costs, and thus the realization of this volume. This are the Deutsche Forschungsge-meinschaft and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Last but not least, thanks are due to Dr. E. NAGELE and his crew from Schweizerbart Editors for the layout of this volume.