The Cambrian System in Northwestern Argentina: stratigraphical and palaeontologica framework. Reply.

ACEÑOLAZA, GUILLERMO F.

Geologica Acta

Institu Jaume Almera

Lugar: Barcelona; Año: 2005 p. 73 - 77

1695-6133

A recent discussion by Buatois and Mángano on the article published in the special volume "Advances in the knowledge of the Cambrian System" (Aceñolaza, 2003a), focused on several geological aspects of the Cambrian sequences in northern Argentina. I would like to express my gratitude to the early referred authors for some interesting observations made regarding the paper, that originally had as a goal to provide a wide bibliographical data for those readers interested in these South American sequences. Unfortunately, their discussion is somewhat belated. After almost three years of the original handling of revised papers, some of the ideas discussed and data observed are considered in a similar direction. Buatois and Mángano have based their discussions and judgements, mostly on data fully published long after the acceptance of the final paper (e.g. Buatois and Mángano, 2003a , b, c; Buatois et al., 2003; Mángano and Buatois, 2003a, b; Mángano and Buatois, 2004; Mángano and Buatois, in press). Reviewers seem to have waited for their papers/abstracts to be published to send their outdated discussion, without mentioning later contributions that helped – in a similar direction – to clarify some aspects of the Cambrian sequences of North-western Argentina (e.g., Aceñolaza and Aceñolaza, 2001; 2003; Aceñolaza, 2004). The special volume was published as a result of the VI field meeting of the Subcommission on Cambrian Stratigraphy (IUGS) held in Argentina in the year 2000. Papers were received at the meeting, accepted during the first semester of 2002 and finally published in March 2003. As stated by Buatois and Mángano, views on this topics are changing at a very fast pace, based on an important number of publications during the last years. This amount of publications in different media resulted in the "rather convolute story frequently going back and forth" mentioned by them, where updated information published mostly as short papers and abstracts came out before the discussed paper. Aceñolaza and Aceñolaza (2001) is a clear example of this situation, where a short paper presented at the 2001 field meeting of the Subcommission held in China, one year after the Argentine meeting, was published before the discussed paper. Some aspects related to the discussion done by Buatois and Mángano shall be clarified as follows: