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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database

Oklahoma City Geological Society

Abstract


The Shale Shaker Digest V, Volumes XV-XVII (1964-1967)
Pages 414-421

Cretaceous Shoreline Across the South

William F. Tanner

ABSTRACT

Structural analysis and a study of depositional patterns produce a shoreline, for Cretaceous time, across Arkansas and Oklahoma. This is combined with results of previous work to make a paleogeographic map of six southern states. The greatest uncertainty occurs in eastern Arkansas, where Cretaceous rocks are not exposed, and in southwestern Tennessee and northern Mississippi. where studies are not complete yet. Shoreline orientation in east central Oklahoma, although reasonably good, is not beyond dispute. Structural considerations alone, in the rest of the area, require a map roughly like the one drawn. Depositional patterns support the structural conclusions.

Cross-bedding, pebble size gradients, ripple marks, pebble imbrication, probable beach rock, soft pebble conglomerates, burrows, and a channel are used in making this synthesis.

The Cretaceous shoreline was oriented essentially east-west across southwestern Arkansas and southeastern Oklahoma, and appears to have extended northward into Kansas across the eastern half of Oklahoma (west of the Ouachita and Ozark Mountains, but east of the center of the state). A chain of islands, and later a broad shoal, probably existed where the exhumed Arbuckle Mountains are today. At least two parts of the Arkansas Ouachita Mountains were active, or at least topographically high, during Cretaceous time. Field evidence indicates a north-to-south topographic slope in southwestern Arkansas.


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