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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database

AAPG Bulletin

Abstract


Volume: 69 (1985)

Issue: 9. (September)

First Page: 1421

Last Page: 1422

Title: Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary in East-Central Texas: ABSTRACT

Author(s): S. Gartner, M. J. Jiang

Article Type: Meeting abstract

Abstract:

The Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary is exposed in a series of outcrops near and along the Brazos River near Eloise in Falls County. At the best known exposure, 400 m downstream from the Texas Highway 413 bridge over the Brazos River, the precise location of the boundary, based on a detailed study of nannofossils, is in a mudstone interval approximately 15 cm above a 50-cm thick prominent sandstone-mudstone-siltstone complex that has been used traditionally to designate the boundary. The complex consists of a basal friable sand lying on a scoured surface, a hard rippled calcareous sandstone, a thin soft mudstone, and a prominent hard chalk or siltstone. This same complex is exposed about 1 mi (1.6 km) downstream at the mouth of a gully, where the thickness and the character o the members of the complex are similar. Toward the head of the same gully, the sandstone complex is again exposed, but there, the rippled sandstone member is substantially thicker and more massive, although the other members of the complex retain their thickness and character. A short lateral distance downstream from the mouth of the gully, the sandstone complex becomes increasingly clayey and disappears quickly. The entire complex has been interpreted variously as a storm deposit or shelf

End_Page 1421------------------------------

turbidite. These, however, do not appear to offer an entirely satisfactory explanation of the depositional conditions.

At all of the sections in which the sandstone complex is present, the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary is slightly above the complex. In these sections, deposition across the boundary is continuous although the biostratigraphic units may vary in thickness in the sections. A most reasonable explanation of the Cretaceous-Tertiary transition as expressed in these sections is that deposition of the sandstone complex, probably by several related processes, occurred in latest Cretaceous time. The biologically catastrophic boundary event occurred rapidly but somewhat later, and probably was not directly related to deposition of the sandstone complex.

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Copyright 1997 American Association of Petroleum Geologists