ABSTRACT

The Great Bank of Guizhou (GBG) is an exceptionally well exposed isolated Triassic platform in the Nanpanjiang Basin of South China. The platform is exhumed with its depositional profile preserved and is dissected by a faulted syncline that exposes a complete and uncomplicated cross section providing a unique opportunity to evaluate mechanisms involved in its birth, evolution, and demise.

The GBG formed near the southern margin of the Yangtze Platform during a deepening event that expanded the Nanpanjiang Basin and drowned the region surrounding the GBG in the latest Permian. Initial accumulation of the GBG began in the latest Permian with small reef mounds and open-marine skeletal packstones. Following the end-Permian extinction, cyanobacterial boundstones grew over the bank top. During the Early Triassic the GBG developed a low-relief bank profile with mobile oolite shoals at the margin, shallow-subtidal and peritidal deposits in the interior, and gentle slopes dominated by pelagics, debris-flow deposits, and turbidites at the basin margin. In the Middle Triassic (Anisian) the GBG developed a progressively steepening profile rimmed with massive Tubiphytes reefs. The platform was flat topped with tidal-flat deposits across the interior. Basin-margin deposition was dominated by turbidites and debris-flow deposits but eventually shifted to avalanche and rock-fall deposits as the slopes steepened to the angle of repose. In the Middle Triassic (Ladinian) an erosional escarpment up to 1700 m high developed at the margin. Platform-margin strata are bedded packstones similar to interior strata, whereas breccias at the basin margin contain coral-boundstone clasts suggesting erosion of reefs from the escarpment. A restricted subtidal lagoon formed in the interior, producing an atoll-like morphology. Later, a flat-topped profile was restored as tidal flats spread across the interior. In the beginning of the Late Triassic deepening contributed to termination of the GBG before siliciclastic turbidites and shales were deposited over the platform.

In contrast with the well known platforms of the Dolomites of northern Italy, the GBG contains abundant muddy carbonates and a progressively steepening bank to reef-rimmed and escarpment architecture. The Italian platforms contain little mud and have angle-of-repose, pinnacle geometries. The GBG's larger size increased mud production and protected it from extensive winnowing of mud, which in turn resulted in off-bank shedding of muddy sediments that were stable on relatively gentle, basin-margin slopes which progressively steepened and ultimately led to avalanche deposits and a high-relief erosional escarpment. In contrast, the lesser mud content of the Dolomites platforms forced avalanche and talus deposition to dominate throughout deposition of basin margins, which in turn produced their angle-of-repose geometries.