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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database

AAPG Bulletin

Abstract


Volume: 49 (1965)

Issue: 3. (March)

First Page: 352

Last Page: 352

Title: Conodonts from the Wabamun Group (Upper Devonian) from the Canadian Subsurface: ABSTRACT

Author(s): Michael C. Mound

Article Type: Meeting abstract

Abstract:

The Upper Devonian Wabamun Formation was named for 562 feet of limestone and dolomite in Anglo-Canadian's Wabamun Lake well, south of Edmonton, Alberta. Subsequently, the formation was elevated to group status in the Stettler area where it was divided into the upper, thin, Big Valley Limestone and the lower, predominantly evaporitic and dolomitic, Stettler Formation. These latter units are not generally recognizable outside the Stettler area, where these strata are termed "Wabamun Group undivided" or simply "Wabamun Formation."

According to previous studies (Wonfor and Andrichuk, 1956), Wabamun rocks in the Stettler area attained a pre-Mississippian thickness, ranging from less than 500 feet in the east to over 800 feet in the west. The general structural setting is on the regional southwesterly dip of the Alberta basin. The Wabamun strata are part of the basin's lower Paleozoic sequence of carbonates, shales, siltstones, and evaporites of Cambrian through Mississippian ages, overlying a crystalline Precambrian basement.

Wabamun conodonts have been recovered from cores from three wells near the towns of Edmonton, Westerose, and Calgary. The conodont fauna thus far revealed has been abundant and diverse. Named and unnamed species of the platform genera Palmatolepis and especially Polygnathus are abundant, as are the bars and blades of the species representing the genera Spathognathodus, Apatognathus, Hindeodella, Pelekysgnathus, Trichonodella, and Angulodus; the cones of Acodina and Drepanodus also characterize the Wabamun fauna. Two species are believed to represent a genus of bar-type conodont never before described; another species of a cone-type unit represents a hitherto unnamed genus.

Previously published studies of conodont faunas have not, with a very few exceptions, generally included the conodonts from subsurface or exposed rocks in western Canada. For this reason, comparison of new material with similar Canadian conodonts is impossible or impractical for the most part. Comparison of the Wabamun conodonts is therefore made with the better-known Devonian faunas of the United States and western Europe.

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Copyright 1997 American Association of Petroleum Geologists