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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database

New Orleans Geological Society

Abstract


Geology and Hydrogeology of Northeastern Yucatan, 1978
Pages 43-59

Carbonate Sand and Gravel on the Shallow Shelf, Northeastern Yucatan Peninsula1

William C. Ward

ABSTRACT

High-energy carbonate, sands and gravel accumulate on the inner margin of the eastern Yucatan shelf. Carbonate sands are deposited as large spillover lobes, submarine dunes, seagrass banks, beaches, spits, and eolian dunes. Major factors controlling dispersal and deposition of these Holocene carbonate sediments are: (1) the northward-flowing Yucatan current, (2) pre-Holocene topography on the limestone shelf, (3) littoral drift, (4) hurricanes, (5) normal waves and wind, and (6) biota.

Carbonate sediments on the inner Yucatan shelf form textural belts paralleling the strandline. Grain size generally decreases toward the mainland, with sand-size material concentrated in the nearshore-beach-coastal dune zone. The best-sorted sand is along the landward margin of the sand belt in the beach-dune trend.

A partly submarine, partly subaerial belt of oolitically coated sand parallels this coastline. Ooids are formed in two high-energy segments of the nearshore zone and are reworked from submerged outcrops of older oolitic limestone. The belt of oolitic sediment is thickest on its landward edge, where coastal dunes accumulate. The carbonate dune-beach deposits rapidly lithify enhancing their chance of preservation. Seaward the oolitic sand changes to uncoated bioclastic, pelletoid, and lithoclastic sand and gravel.

1 First printed 1974

Most of this paper is extracted with permission from W. C. Ward and M. J. Brady, 1973, High-energy carbonates on the inner shelf, northeastern Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico: Trans., Gulf Coast Assoc. Geol. Soc., V. 23, p. 226-238.

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