0000000000827775
AUTHOR
Juan C. Braga
Sedimentary model and high-frequency cyclicity in a Mediterranean, shallow-shelf, temperate-carbonate environment (uppermost Miocene, Agua Amarga Basin, Southern Spain)
Uppermost Tortonian to lower Messinian temperate carbonates crop out in the Agua Amarga Basin (SE Spain). They consist of four units. The lower three units can be tentatively assigned to the lowstand systems tract of a fourth-order sequence, constituting in turn the lowstand (‘megatrough unit’), transgressive (‘breccia unit’) and highstand (‘bedded unit’) stages of a higher-order cycle. All these materials were deposited in a small pull-apart basin related to the sinistral Carboneras strike-slip fault system. The best represented is the bedded unit (up to 25 m thick), which consists of bioclastic, bryozoan/bivalve-dominated calcarenites/calcirudites with abundant fragments of echinoids, bar…
Nearshore, temperate, carbonate depositional systems (lower Tortonian, Agua Amarga Basin, southern Spain): implications for carbonate sequence stratigraphy
Abstract The bryozoan-rich lower Tortonian carbonates of the Agua Amarga Basin in southern Spain (Province of Almeria) provide an example of sediments formed in a nearshore, non-tropical depositional setting. Based on data derived from logging of sections and from field mapping, these lower Tortonian carbonates form a depositional sequence, which is subdivided into several depositional systems. A lowstand systems tract, which consists of volcaniclastic fan deltas and washover deposits, formed on the leeward side of a basement shoal which delimited the basin towards the south. A transgressive systems tract, which is characterised by a landward encroachment of deposits, is represented by subm…