Observations

• The Reklaw, Queen City, and Weches depositional episodes in south and central Texas have prograded across the narrower shelf there and are recognized out into slope environments. However, because of distance from sediment supply and a widening shelf coming from southeast Texas into south Louisiana, these formations thin, downlap, and condense as they are traced eastward into western Louisiana. The Queen City and Weches units are readily correlatable as thin but distinctive resistive bedsets that account for about the lowermost third-to-half of the Cane River Marl in western Louisiana (Fig. 2). These thinning beds can be confidently traced as far east as Allen Parish, but eventually become unrecognizable lowermost bedsets fully within the basal Cane River Marl. The Reklaw is questionably traceable into Louisiana but is likely very thin and at the base of the marl.
• The distinctive Cane River Marl of southwest and central Louisiana is a greatly condensed section composed of very thin down-dip time-equivalents of the Reklaw, Queen City, Weches, and, in its upper portions, some of the oldest down-dip Sparta prograding units. This marl unit, which is at the bottom of the Lower Claiborne section, is observed in parts of south-central Louisiana to be comparatively very thin (less than 30 feet total thickness in places) representing something less than 5% of the total section in terms of relative thickness but conversely representing approximately 70 to 75% of Lutetian time! The Cane River Marl sits by regional disconformity on top of the Wilcox Group.
• At least ten cycles (probably 4^th - 5^th order) of silty-sandy zones within the Sparta genetic stratigraphic unit prograde - downlap - gulfward and eastward in Louisiana. These stacked silty-sandy sections pass down-dip into deeper-water, finer-grained sediments transitional to what is called lithostratigraphically the Cane River Shale. Older units of the latter themselves pass into, even farther down-dip, the much-condensed upper beds of the Cane River Marl.

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• The lower Claiborne section is apparently bounded regionally by major transgressive surfaces of erosion (ravinement surfaces, or regional disconformities): one at the base of the Reklaw - Cane River Marl / top Wilcox Group; and the other at the base of the Cook Mountain / top Sparta. Thus, the lower Claiborne section (the Lutetian spanned approximately 8 - 10 Ma) described here represents a complete 2^nd order cycle.