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Abstract

Minisini, D., and H. Schwartz, 2007, An early Paleocene cold seep system in the Panoche and Tumey Hills, Central California (United States), in A. Hurst and J. Cartwright, eds., Sand injectites: Implications for hydrocarbon exploration and production: AAPG Memoir 87, p. 185-197.

DOI:10.1306/1209862M873264

Copyright copy2007 by The American Association of Petroleum Geologists.

An Early Paleocene Cold Seep System in the Panoche and Tumey Hills, Central California (United States)

Daniel Minisini,1 Hilde Schwartz2

1Ismar-CNR (Istituto di Scienze Marine–Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche), Bologna, Italy; present address: Dipartimento Scienze della Terra e Geologico-Ambientale, Universita di Bologna, Bologna, Italy
2Earth Sciences Department, University of California at Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, California, U.S.A.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work was supported in part by the Petroleum Research Fund (Grant 35329-AC2) and the University of California Energy Institute (Grant 19900-443759). We are indebted to Casey Moore for introducing us to the field area and for his ongoing encouragement and advice, and to Bruce Tanner and Steve Bohaty at University of California Santa Cruz for help with sample preparation and analysis. We also thank the U.S. Bureau of Land Management for permission to work in the Panoche Hills Wilderness Study Area and for access to aerial photography. This is Ismar-CNR (Istituto di Scienze Marine–Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche) contribution number 1454.

ABSTRACT

A paleoseep system consisting of hundreds of sand injectites and authigenic carbonate structures crops out in the Panoche and Tumey Hills, central California. This paleoseep system developed on the western margin of the Great Valley forearc basin and is contained within the uppermost, early Paleocene part of the dominantly siliciclastic Moreno Formation. It is 20 km (12 mi) long and is distributed over more than 700 m (2296 ft) of stratigraphic section. Injectites appear in the lower 600 m (1968 ft), thinning upward from 3 m (9.8 ft) to less than 1 cm (0.4 in.), and co-occur with the paleoseep carbonate structures in the uppermost 200 m (660 ft) of section. The paleoseep slab, mound, and concretionary carbonates are 13C depleted (to minus46permil Vienna Peedee belemnite) and commonly contain pipelike structures and the remains of chemosynthetic macroinvertebrates, including tube worms and lucinid bivalves. Their diverse morphologies likely reflect different rates and styles of fluid flow, but most show a similar paragenesis beginning with biologic colonization and pervasive micrite authigenesis and concluding with sparite precipitation in vugs and conduits. The close stratigraphic and compositional associations of paleoseep carbonate structures with injectites suggest that they were contemporaneous, and that injectites controlled the location of the seeps. Variations in abundance, morphology, and geochemistry of the authigenic carbonates, fossils, and injectites across the outcrop area indicate considerable variability in seep venting rates locally, regionally, and throughout the nearly 2-Ma duration of the seep system. Thus, the Panoche and Tumey Hills locality offers a four-dimensional view of the nature and evolution of a large, injectite-driven, cold seep in a forearc setting.

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