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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database

New Orleans Geological Society

Abstract


Geology and Hydrogeology of Northeastern Yucatan, 1978
Pages 209-218

Cozumel Island: Stratigraphy and Depositional History of Upper Pleistocene Limestone1

Richard H. Spaw

ABSTRACT

During late Pleistocene Cozumel Island underwent at least two periods of submergence, with associated shallow-water sedimentation, and two intervening periods of emergence, with associated vadose diagenesis.

Two older Pleistocene, ten younger Pleistocene, and one Holocene shallow-water carbonate lithofacies are differentiated by their geometry and postion, megafauna, sedimentary structure, texture, grain type, mineralogy, and cement. The older Pleistocene units represent patch-reef and sandy bank-interior environments of deposition. The younger Pleistocene rocks were deposited in windward and leeward coral-reef, reef-pass, seagrass-stabilized backreef, oolite-shoal, storm-channel, beach, and dune environments. Holocene beachrock also is on the island.

Previously described 122,000 ± 2,000 years B.P. reef, backreef, and beach-nearshore deposits on the eastern Yucatan coast are similar in character and position to the 121,000 ± 6,000 years B.P. upper Pleistocene limestones found on Cozumel Island. A reconstruction of depositional history of Cozumel Island shows that no movement of the island relative to the mainland has occurred in the last 125,000 years.


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