About This Item

Share This Item

The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database

AAPG Bulletin

Abstract


Volume: 67 (1983)

Issue: 3. (March)

First Page: 517

Last Page: 517

Title: Submarine Fan Sedimentation, Ouachita Mountains, Arkansas and Oklahoma: ABSTRACT

Author(s): R. J. Moiola, G. Shanmugam

Article Type: Meeting abstract

Abstract:

More than 10,000 m (33,000 ft) of interbedded sandstones and shales comprise the Upper Mississippian and Lower Pennsylvanian flysch succession (Stanley, Jackford, Johns Valley, Atoka) in the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas and Oklahoma. Deposited primarily by turbidity current and hemipelagic processes in bathyal and abyssal water depths, these strata form major submarine fan complexes that prograded in a westerly direction along the axis of an elongate remnant ocean basin that was associated with the collision and suturing of the North American and African plates.

A longitudinal fan system is visualized as the depositional framework for these strata which were deposited in a setting analagous to the modern Bengal fan of the Indian Ocean. Facies analysis of the Jackfork Sandstone indicates that inner fan deposits are present in the vicinity of Little Rock, Arkansas; middle fan distributary channel and crevasse splay deposits occur at DeGray Dam, Arkansas; and outer fan depositional lobe deposits are present in southeastern Oklahoma. Basin plain equivalents are postulated to exist as far away as the Marathon region in west Texas.

Boulder-bearing units (olistostromes) with exotic clasts were shed laterally into the Ouachita basin, primarily from its northern margin. These olistostromes occur throughout the fan succession in all facies (i.e., inner, middle, and outer fan). This relationship may serve as a useful criterion for recognizing similar fan systems in the rock record.

End_of_Article - Last_Page 517------------

Copyright 1997 American Association of Petroleum Geologists