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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database
AAPG Bulletin
Abstract
AAPG Bulletin, V.
2006. The American Association of Petroleum Geologists. All rights reserved.
DOI:10.1306/10040504132
Depositional and
structural
evolution of the middle Miocene depositional episode, east-central Gulf of Mexico
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Ricardo I. Combellas-Bigott,1 William E. Galloway2
1ChevronTexaco, 4800 Fournace Pl, Bellaire, Texas 77401; present address: Chevron, 1500 Louisiana, Houston, Texas 77002; [email protected]
2Institute for Geophysics, University of Texas at Austin, 4412 Spicewood Springs Road, Building 600, Austin, Texas 78759-8500
ABSTRACT
A regional stratigraphic and structural
framework has been established for the middle Miocene sediment-depositional episode from the shelf through the slope to the basin floor for the east-central Gulf of Mexico. Two widespread, transgressive deposits associated with the faunal tops Amphistegina B (15.5 Ma) and Textularia W (12.1 Ma) define the middle Miocene depositional episode. The middle Miocene episode incorporates four genetic cycles (each
1–2 m.y.) bounded by regional maximum flooding surfaces and distal condensed
sections
.
Two long-lived extrabasinal fluvial-deltaic axes, the ancestral Mississippi and the eastern Tennessee systems, provided the bulk of sediments that infilled the middle Miocene depocenters. Salt-related structural
provinces controlled the location and configuration of the depocenters. Linked
structural
systems, dominated by gravity spreading, and an eastern minibasin province, driven by differential subsidence, were established during this period. Two depositional systems tracts characterize the constructional shelf margin of the middle Miocene: (1) a volumetrically dominant mixed-load fluvial-dominated platform delta, shelf-margin delta, and delta-fed apron systems tract; and (2) a strand-plain, shelf, and muddy slope systems tract. However, the offlapping shelf-margin systems were punctuated by a large-scale slope failure, the Harang collapse system, associated with massive salt withdrawal and retreat of delta systems.
A large volume of sediment, funneled by the Harang collapse system, bypassed the slope, initiating a long-lived submarine-fan system. The fan formed in a minibasin corridor and unconfined abyssal plain, approximately 240 mi (384 km) from the active shelf margins. The fan system evolved from a structurally controlled, elongate, sand-rich to mixed sand and mud fan to a large, radial, mixed sand and mud fan.
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