Stratigraphic distribution of the Codell Sandstone in the Denver Basin using wireline logs and core

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 305-330
Author(s):  
Virginia Gent ◽  
Richard Bottjer ◽  
Mark Longman ◽  
James Hagadorn

Core data from five key wells spanning the Denver Basin were tied to wireline log data and used to interpret the distribution of the Middle Turonian Codell Sandstone Member of the Carlile Formation across the Denver Basin. The character of the Codell’s upper contact is sharp with a localized top-down truncation across the basin, which is consistent with an associated unconformity surface. In contrast, the Codell’s lower contact varies from being gradational in most of the southern Denver Basin to being unconformable in the northern basin. Log correlations reveal that the Codell is absent within an elongate northeast-trending swath up to 125 miles wide in northeastern Colorado. This elongate gap is herein referred to as the ‘No Codell Zone’ abbreviated as NoCoZo. Hypotheses to explain the absence of the Codell Sandstone in the NoCoZo include a lateral facies change from sandstone to shale, non-deposition of Codell-equivalent sediments across this area, post-depositional erosion, or a combination of these processes. Correlation of wireline logs across the northern and southern limits of the NoCoZo, combined with outcrop and core observations, suggest top-down erosion of the Codell increasing into the NoCoZo. However, the overlying Fort Hays Limestone is laterally continuous and has a relatively consistent thickness across the NoCoZo, suggesting two tenable hypotheses: 1) The NoCoZo represents an area of post-Codell erosion due to short-lived growth of a broad, low relief uplift that was no longer active during Fort Hays deposition; or 2) A stepped sea level fall and forced regression resulting in non-deposition of the Codell over this broad swath. North of the NoCoZo, the Codell thickens northward to more than 40 ft into adjacent parts of Wyoming and Nebraska. In this northern area, the Codell has two main lithofacies in three laterally correlative zones, in ascending order: a lower bioturbated siltstone to very fine-grained sandstone ranging from 2 to 20 feet thick, a middle 2 to 10-foot thick laminated to bedded siltstone to fine-grained sandstone, and an upper 5 to 20-foot thick bioturbated siltstone to very fine-grained sandstone. Southeast of the NoCoZo the Codell thickens to as much as 80 feet in an east-trending belt from Pueblo, Colorado, into west central Kansas. The southern Codell can be divided into two coarsening upward parasequences, from a basal muddy coarse siltstones to very fine-grained sandstones. The siltstones and sandstones in the southern Codell are mostly bioturbated with locally developed bedded facies at the top.

2002 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 505-518 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Lavoie ◽  
Michel Allard ◽  
Philip R Hill

Eastern Hudson Bay is characterized by falling relative sea level as a result of post-glacial isostatic rebound, which makes the region a natural laboratory for rapid forced regression, where the evolution of deltaic systems and offshore sedimentation patterns can be studied. A multidisciplinary approach involving airphoto analysis, offshore geophysical surveys, sediment coring, and facies and diatom analyses was used in this study of the Nastapoka River delta. The delta has formed as a result of the fluvial erosion of emerged Quaternary sediments but is mainly subaqueous. Offshore, in the prodelta zone, the oldest deposits are glaciomarine, laid down when the ice front of the receding Laurentide ice sheet stood on the Nastapoka hills some 7700–6800 years BP. Lateral equivalents of this glaciomarine unit are presently exposed on land. The shallow-water platform of the delta shows a thin surficial unit of wave-worked sand that overlies fine-grained, deeper water deposits derived from erosion of clay soils in the river catchment a few centuries ago, probably during periods of intense thermokarst activity. As the isostatic uplift continues, the deltaic platform will gradually emerge and be incised by the river channel.


2010 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-38
Author(s):  
Damir Bucković ◽  
Maja Martinuš ◽  
Duje Kukoč ◽  
Blanka Tešović ◽  
Ivan Gušić

High-frequency sea-level changes recorded in deep-water carbonates of the Upper Cretaceous Dol Formation (island of Brač, Croatia)The upper part of the Middle Coniacian/Santonian-Middle Campanian deep-water Dol Formation of the island of Brač is composed of countless fine-grained allodapic intercalations deposited in an intraplatform trough. Within the studied section 13 beds can be distinguished, each defined by its lower part built up of dark grey limestone with abundance of branched, horizontally to subhorizontally oriented burrows, and the upper part, in which the light grey to white limestone contains larger burrows, rarely branched, showing no preferential orientation. The lower, dark grey, intensively bioturbated levels are interpreted as intervals formed during high-frequency sea-level highstands, while the upper, light grey-to-white levels are interpreted as intervals formed during the high-frequency sea-level lowstands. Cyclic alternation of these two intervals within the fine-grained allodapic beds is interpreted as the interaction between the amount of carbonate production on the platform margin and the periodicity and intensity of shedding and deposition in the distal part of toe-of-slope environment, which is governed by Milankovitch-band high frequency sea-level changes.


Author(s):  
Sven Zea ◽  
Gladys Bernal ◽  
Gloria López ◽  
Marion Weber ◽  
Rocío Del Pilar García-Urueña

In tropical seas there are submerged hard bottoms that harbor corals but that are not coralline in origin. This is the case for the “Banco de las Ánimas” sector in the continental shelf of the Gulf of Salamanca, Colombian Caribbean. In its upper portion (14–16 m in depth), there are low mounds of sandstone blocks and slabs, conforming reefs, colonized by coralline biota and sparse corals. To confirm their lithology an initial petrographic analysis was carried out, which showed the rocks are made up of fine-grained sands, mature in texture, cemented by dolomite. It is proposed that these reefs were formed in a beach–dune–lagoon system during an ancient sea level, similar to the recent coastal bar of Salamanca. In these high-evaporation, supratidal saline environments, they could have been formed as beach rocks or as eolianites, by aragonite cementation, modified later into dolomite. Whether the foundation of the deeper coral formations of the bankis also sandstone or in fact coralline, remains to be determined.


2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 433-450 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Crosby ◽  
Kirsten Seale

As urban renewal agendas are fortified in cities globally, ‘creativity’ – as contained within discourses of the creative industries, the Creative City and the creative economy – is circulated as the currency of secure post-industrial urban futures. Using the nexus between creativity and the urban as a starting point, the authors investigate how local enterprises visually communicate the urban in a neighbourhood that is characterized by the interface between manufacturing and creative industries. This research takes a fine-grained approach to the notion of creativity through an audit and qualitative analysis of the visual presentation, material attributes and semiotic meaning of street numbers. The authors do this by collecting data on and analysing how street numbers have been made, selected, used, replaced and layered in a contested industrial precinct in Australia’s largest city, Sydney. They contend that street numbers, as a ubiquitous technology within the city that is both operational and creative, are metonyms for what they understand to be urban. In arguing for vernacular readings of the city, they make use of a top-down, governmental mode of reading the city – the operational legibility of street numbering – as an intervention in current discourses of the urban and of creativity in the city.


2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 211-248
Author(s):  
James Hagadorn ◽  
Mark Longman ◽  
Richard Bottjer ◽  
Virginia Gent ◽  
Christopher Holm-Denoma ◽  
...  

We formally assign, describe and interpret a principal reference section for the middle Turonian Codell Sandstone Member of the Carlile Shale near Codell, Kansas. This section, at the informally named Pumpjack Road, provides the thickest surface expression (9 m, ~30 ft) of the unit in Ellis County. The outcrop exposes features that typify the Codell throughout the southern Denver Basin and vicinity. At this reference section, the Codell conformably overlies the Blue Hill Shale Member of the Carlile Shale and is unconformably overlain by the Fort Hays Limestone Member of the Niobrara Formation or locally by a thin (<0.9 m, <3 ft) discontinuous mudstone known as the Antonino facies. The top contact of the Codell is slightly undulatory with possible compaction features or narrow (<30.5 m, <100 ft), low-relief (0.3-0.6 m, 1-2 ft) scours, all of which hint that the Codell is a depositional remnant, even at the type section. At Pumpjack Road, the Codell coarsens upward from a recessive-weathering argillaceous medium-grained siltstone with interbedded mudstone at its base to a more indurated cliff-forming muddy, highly bioturbated, very fine-grained sandstone at its top. The unit contains three informal gradational packages: a lower Codell of medium to coarse siltstone and mudstone, a middle Codell of muddy coarse siltstone, and an upper muddy Codell dominated by well-sorted very fine-grained sandstone. The largest grain fractions, all <120 mm in size, are mostly quartz (40-80%), potassium feldspar (7-12%), and albite (1-2%), with some chert (<15%), zircon, and other constituents such as abraded phosphatic skeletal debris. Rare fossil fish teeth and bones also occur. Detrital and authigenic clays make up 9 to 42% of the Codell at the reference section. Detrital illite and mixed layer illite/smectite are common, along with omnipresent kaolinite as grain coatings or cement. As is typical for the Codell, the sandstone at the type section has been pervasively bioturbated. Most primary structures and bedding are obscured, particularly toward the top of the unit where burrows are larger, deeper and more diverse than at its base. This bioturbation has created a textural inversion in which the larger silt and sand grains are very well sorted but are mixed with mud. Detrital zircons from the upper Codell are unusual in that they are mostly prismatic to acicular, euhedral, colorless, unpitted, and unabraded, and have a near-unimodal age peak centered at ~94 Ma. These characteristics suggest they were reworked mainly from Cenomanian bentonites; their ultimate source was likely from the Cordilleran orogenic belt to the west and northwest.


2019 ◽  
Vol 93 (3) ◽  
pp. 476-495 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norman M. Savage

AbstractThe biofacies of the Lower Palmatolepis rhenana Biozone to Palmatolepis triangularis Biozone in the Mae Sariang section, northwestern Thailand, are marked by alternations of Palmatolepis-dominated biofacies and Polygnathus-dominated biofacies related to fluctuations in seawater depth. Fine-grained limestone accumulated through the Lower Palmatolepis rhenana Biozone, Upper Palmatolepis rhenana Biozone, Palmatolepis linguiformis Biozone, Palmatolepis subperlobata Biozone, and Palmatolepis triangularis Biozone. A regression in the Upper rhenana Zone was followed by a recovery transgression that extended up through the linguiformis Zone. Conodont faunas increased until near the end of the linguiformis Zone, but in the overlying subperlobata Zone and triangularis Zone, conodont numbers dropped and most conodont species disappeared. It is possible the event coincides with a glacially forced regression, but there is no evidence of this in the section apart from a positive spike in δ13C. Another possible cause of the global marine extinction event is toxic levels of metals resulting from widespread volcanism. New taxa in this paper are Palmatolepis chaemensis new species, Palmatolepis thamensis new species, and Polygnathus tenellus surinensis new subspecies.UUID: http://zoobank.org/f2b55ba8-fe49-46f6-a2d5-bfd0208f1460


2006 ◽  
Vol 6 (11) ◽  
pp. 4-4 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Navalpakkam ◽  
L. Itti

1976 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 73 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. D. Partridge

In the non-marine to marginal marine environments of the Latrobe Group, distinct sedimentary sequences are recognised on seismic records and these sequences are often expressed in wells by palynological zones, changes in E-log character and lithology.The succession of sequences represents variations in sea level, many of which are interpreted aseustatic. Eustatic falls are represented by unconformities and channel formation along the seaward margin and by hiatuses (frequently with dolomite cementation of underlying sands) landward in deltaic and non-marine sections. Eustatic rises are represented by dinoflagellate ingressions over truncated surfaces at sequence boundaries, followed by outbuilding of deltaic environments at the stillstand towards the end of each cycle.During the Paleocene and Eocene very little sediment was deposited beyond the limits of the marginal marine environments except within channels where the Flounder and Turrum Formations are found. In this time interval they was an overall landward encroachment of successive sequences reflecting an overall sea level rise. The interaction of rising sea level and limited deposition beyond the marginal marine edge meant that successive sequences became more restricted seaward such that within the marine environment the area of non-deposition increased. The surface thus defined, modified locally by channel erosion, constitutes the unconformity at the top of the Latrobe Group. This unconformity surface was preserved when deposition of fine-grained open marine sediments of the Lakes Entrance Formation commenced in the Oligocene.In the Tasman Sea a succession of terrigenous silts and clays present in the Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) Site 283 can be correlated with periods when fine-grained sediments bypassed the Gippsland shelf. The stratigraphy of this site can be interpreted as a record of availability of sediment from the southeastern Australian continental shelf. The times of commencement and termination of stratigraphic units and disconformities at Site 283 correlate with timing of eustatic cycles. Thus the stratigraphy of Site 283 is a record, as is the Latrobe Group, of how eustacy interacts with basin morphology to modify distribution of sediments.


1989 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Perissoratis ◽  
D. Mitropoulos

AbstractA dense network of 3.5 kHz and Uniboom seismic profiles revealed the geological evolution of the Ierissos-Alexandroupolis Shelf area of the northern Aegean during the latest sea-level rise. Near the end of the Pleistocene, ca. 14,000 yr B.P., the sea was at about − 120 m, and almost 5300 km2 of shelf was exposed to subaerial erosion. Two permanet lakes existed in the Ierissos and Kavalla Gulfs, as well as a number of ephemeral lakes scattered throughout the rest of the area. Kavalla Gulf was drained by the Nestos River which joined the Strymon River at the outer Strymonikos Plateau. On the flat Samothraki Plateau were dune fields, marshes, and a number of minor seasonal rivers, while the Evros River flowed east of the plateau. By ca. 13,000 yr B.P. the sea had risen to − 70 m and covered 30% of the previously exposed shelf. The lakes at Ierissos and Strymonikos Gulfs were shallower and the sea approached to within about 5 km of them. Kavalla Gulf and the adjacent eastern Strymonikos Plateau lay 10 m above sea level, while the sea intruded along river mouths at the Samothraki Plateau. During this transgression of the sea river-bed gravels and sands were covered by silts and clays. At the Pleistocene-Holocene transition, ca. 10,500 yr B.P., the sea lay at about − 50 m and in areas of steep slope the coast was close to its present position. At Kavalla Gulf, the sea advanced along the paleochannel of the Nestos River, and the island of Samothraki was separated from the mainland. By ca. 7500 yr B.P. the sea was only 15 m below its present level and the northeastern Aegean shelf assumed nearly its present morphology. The Nestos River changed course to the east and Thassos Island was separated from the mainland. Coarse sediment formed wedges nearshore, whereas fine-grained sediments were distributed widely by current action. In many areas, relict sediments are present.


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