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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database

Tulsa Geological Society

Abstract


Limestones of the Mid-Continent, 1984
Pages 93-126

Shelf to Trough Correlations of Late Desmoinesian and Early Missourian Carbonate Banks and Related Strata, Northeast Oklahoma

Allan P. Bennison

Abstract

Many black phosphatic shale beds associated with cyclic carbonate banks and coal sequences on the north shelf of the Arkoma Seaway thicken toward the seaway axis and extend into the south shelf deposits flanking the Ouachita-Arbuckle orogenic highlands. These south shelf deposits, although differing lithologically from those of the northern shore, show a surprisingly similar number of corresponding cyclic successions. Coals and underclays of the northern shelf have their counterpart in redbeds and nodular caliche paleosols, and both facies indicate low sea-level stillstand. Chert-pebble conglomerates commonly associated with the south-shore sandstones are absent or rare in the north-shore deposits.

Carbonate banks that dominate the northern shelf environment are almost nonexistent on the southern shelf. Biological activity appears to have centered alternately around reefs (algal buildups) and coal swamps in the northern shelf environment. Although fossils on the south shelf indicate that marine deposition of shales and sandstones continued with little interruption throughout much of the sedimentary cycle, similar clastic sediments are comparatively barren on the northern shelf. The southern shelf typically features a transgressive sandstone, usually bypassed in the northern shelf cycle. Consequently, the southern shelf cycle exhibits greater symmetry with the transgressive hemicycle almost equaling the regressive hemicycle in thickness.

Black phosphatic shales (representing high sea-level stands) in both north and south shelf facies are superficially alike except that the adjoining partly dysaerobic concretionary shales usually yield a richer molluscan fauna in the southern shelf facies.


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