A study of the paleoenvironmental evolution of the middle Eocene platforms recognized in the westernmost Tethys has been carried out in the well exposed middle Eocene succession from Sierra Espuña-Mula basin (Betic Cordillera, S Spain). Eight microfacies (Mf1 to Mf8) have been recognized, based mainly on fossil assemblages (principally larger benthic foraminifera), and rock texture and fabric. The

Petrographic datasets from sedimentary rocks are very useful for reconstructing their palaeoenvironmental settings especially when field and fossil datasets are unobtainable or inadequate. This study presents the first detailed and comprehensive petrographic study of the four formations constituting the non–marine Lower Cretaceous of the Weald Sub-basin of south-east England and employed petrographic

Only exceptionally, grains larger than 2–3 mm are involved in dune-forming processes. In 16 Late Glacial – Early Holocene inland dunes deposits from three regions of the northern and central Poland, beds, layers, laminae and lenses containing extra-large grains, up to 20.5x12.5x11 mm in the longest axes, are present. Occurrences of the extra-large grains are documented in the dunes dispersed in three

The Marmara Sea (area 11,350 km2; volume 3,378 km3; central basins >1100 m deep) straddles the North Anatolian Transform Fault separating the Eurasian and Aegean-Anatolian tectonic plates. Along with the shallow straits of Dardanelles and Bosphorus (depths ~63 m and ~40 m, respectively), the Marmara Sea forms the only marine connection between the Black Sea and the eastern Mediterranean. During Pleistocene

In New Caledonia, upper Cretaceous to Palaeogene sedimentary rocks record a regional tectonic shift from Cretaceous extension to Eocene compression, which led to the obduction of oceanic mantle onto the northeastern tip of the submerged Zealandia continent. This study provides new descriptions of these successions in the region of the Gouaro anticline, from outcrops and an extensively cored, 1.9 km

Upper Cretaceous–Danian chalk forms a range of complex diagenetic fabrics despite its commonly white and monotonous appearance in outcrop and core. This reflects the interaction between processes linked to composition, depositional facies, texture, sedimentation rates, bioturbation, mineralogy, burial and hydrocarbon charging history. Such fabrics have a substantial impact on reservoir quality, either

This study provides a detailed sedimentological, stratigraphic and depositional model for the lower Whakataki Formation. The fine-grained nature of the turbidite successions and common Tbcde successions suggests deposition associated with medial to distal submarine fan deposits. However, the textural and compositional immaturity, combined with a high carbonaceous and carbonate content of the clastic

Travertines are generally considered as carbonate deposits related to Ca-rich hot springs. Ca-deficiency hot springs, however, can also produce travertines under suitable conditions and little is known about the travertine deposition and diagenesis in these systems. Therefore, we studied a fossil perched Ca-deficiency spring system at Shihuadong, China to discuss its genesis and diagenesis. This system

The Hare Indian and Canol Formations, which are part of the Horn River Group in the Northwest Territories, Canada, primarily consist of organic-rich mudstones deposited during the Middle to Late Devonian. The formations were previously considered to represent marine basin fill accumulated in an oxygen-starved distal shelf setting, evidenced by the organic-rich character, pyrite content, and lack of

This study documents the occurrence of efflorescent halite speleothems of stalactites, columns, flowstones, stalagmites and popcorns beneath tepee structures in the Red Sea coastal sabkhas, desiccated halite pond and dykes of saltworks, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The study aims to interpret the formation and evolution of efflorescent halite speleothems due to the high relative humidity of the area. Field

The Austin Chalk Group is a very fine grained carbonate mudrock composed predominantly of microorganisms. To geologically characterize such a unit, the components and depositional and diagenetic features must be examined at the nano- to microscale, using micropetrography. Analytical methods include scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, and thin-section analysis. Through

In shallow water atop many isolated platforms and atolls, reef sand aprons largely consist of debris shed platformward from shelf-margin reefs towards the lagoon. Although their general geomorphology and sedimentology are broadly understood, quantitative details of the possible role of reef sand apron hydrodynamics on their geomorphic evolution remain less well constrained. To test the hypothesis that

This paper provides a comprehensive review of the sinter deposits, formed largely of opal-A, that are form around hot springs and geysers throughout the world. The discharge aprons around hot springs and geysers are commonly characterized by spectacular discharge aprons that are covered with variegated microbial mats and ornate arrays of siliceous sinters that commonly contain well-preserved microbes

The Pleistocene and Holocene tufas of the Serra da Bodoquena (Bonito region, Brazilian Midwest) consist of several deposits related to a karstic system developed in the carbonatic rocks of Corumbá Group. Tufas currently forming in the Serra da Bodoquena area (Mimoso and Formoso rivers) were investigated for a better understanding of which environmental changes control the deposition of different types

The Lesser Antilles are a densely populated region where local populations and industrial facilities are concentrated at the coastlines, and are therefore exposed to many rapid-onset hazards such as hurricanes and tsunamis. However, the historical catalog of these events is too short to allow risk assessment and return period estimations, and it needs to be completed with long-term records of washover

Proterozoic aeolian successions tend to exhibit a low complexity in the architectural organisation, generally related to simple dunes with low morphological diversity. Although most palaeoenvironmental reconstructions of ancient ergs confirm this scenario, the general conditions in the Precambrian landmass should have allowed the construction of larger and more complex sedimentary aeolian systems than

Hyperpycnal flows are river-derived extrabasinal turbidity currents transporting both sand and clay to lacustrine, coastal, shelf and deepwater sedimentary environments. Experimental research in the past twenty years has shown that the presence of clay in sediment-laden flows promotes a transitional behavior between fully turbulent flow and a quasi-laminar plug flow regime. However, to date, most work

Volcanic atolls host exceptionally important marine ecosystems in the modern oceans. Yet, due to limited exposures, fossil atolls are poorly constrained. Multiple drowned Cretaceous volcanic atolls have been reported in the Pacific, but less information exists regarding those in the Tethys. Here we report on two early Cenomanian age volcanic atolls outcropping in Mt. Carmel (northern Israel), along

In Castañar Cave (Cáceres, Spain), Mg-Si phases forming fibres and films occur associated with aragonite, magnesite, huntite and spheroidal dolomite in moonmilk, coatings and crust speleothems. A detailed study of bulk and carbonate-removed samples allowed us to identify the Mg-Si phases as kerolite (Mg3Si4O10(OH)2·nH2O) and sepiolite Mg4Si6O15(OH)2·6(H2O) of variable “crystallinity” and very pure

The Miocene Diatom Suite sediments of the Eastern Paratethys Sea, Azerbaijan, provide significant information to establish how Middle Miocene climate influenced erosion, sedimentation and deposition in the marine environments and continental source areas of Western Asia. Discriminant function analyses, ratios of Ti/Al, Si/Ca and Sr/Ca as well as mineralogical composition data indicate the Karaganian-Konkian

The Paleozoic sediments on micro-blocks in the southwestern Central Asian Orogenic Belt record the tectonic evolution of the Paleo-Asian Ocean and accretionary processes of the south Siberian Craton. However, the absence of detailed stratigraphic studies and sedimentary basin analyses has led to disputes on Paleozoic arc-basin relationships and the tectonic evolution of the Junggar block and East Junggar

Deep-sea turbidite deposits are useful tools for submarine paleoseismology. It is fundamental to understand what kind of disturbance occurred owing to the earthquake and which event-induced deposits were formed in a particular area. The 2011 Tohoku-oki earthquake and tsunami were the most destructive geohazards in Japanese history. To understand their influence in the seafloor environment and to characterize

Petrographic analysis based on microfacies identification in thin sections is widely used in sedimentary environment interpretation and paleoecological reconstruction. Fossil recognition from microfacies is an essential procedure for petrographers to complete this task. Distinguishing the morphological and microstructural diversity of skeletal fragments requires extensive prior knowledge of fossil

Stromatolites have been a major focus in the search for ancient microbial life, however, the organic carbon biosignatures of dolomitized stromatolites have not yet been fully characterized or correlated with their dolomitizing conditions. Although dolomitization rarely preserves microbial morphology, the presence of organic carbon can provide valuable information for characterization of fossils' biogenicity

Recognition of seabed sediment is one of the critical foundations of marine exploitation. This paper proposes a probabilistic neural network (PNN) based method to improve the identification accuracy of seabed sediment from side-scan sonar imagery. The feature set of side-scan images consists of two types of features, namely textural features and color features. In this study, partial eigenvalues of

We reviewed historical data on surface sediment composition/distribution and hydrodynamics of the Patos-Mirim lagoonal system, the largest coastal shallow limnological system of the world, located in eastern South America, which is ca.15,000 km2, the maximum length is almost 500 km and maximum depth is around 7 m. We inferred the geographical position of six mud depocenters in relation to the hydrodynamic

Three sediment cores from North Sound lagoon provide a continuous record of environmental changes (atmospheric moisture and temperature) that have affected Grand Cayman, British West Indies, over the last ~6000 years. Changes in the facies and carbonate components indicate a transition from fresh-brackish-water coastal ponds to a fully marine environment, which coincided with global sea level rise

Research on the sedimentary architecture and provenance of sublacustrine fans is crucial not only to better understand the gravity flow evolution in lacustrine basins but to successfully locate hydrocarbon reservoirs. This study targets at a sublacustrine fan with a large petroleum reserve that has been revealed by drilling within an Eocene lacustrine succession in the Fushan Depression, northern South

Climate change in the Asian interior during the early Cenozoic remains poorly constrained due to difficulties in distinguishing the impacts of global cooling, the early uplift of the Tibetan Plateau and the retreat of the Paratethys. A quantitative estimation of paleolake salinity enables a better understanding of the regional hydrological cycle and contemporaneous climate change. Here, we present

The carbonate rocks of the Ordovician Majiagou Formation from the northwestern part of Henan Province and their diverse trace fossils provide an outcrop analogue for bioturbated, low porosity and low permeability carbonate reservoirs. Three ichnofabrics can be defined based on the ichnotaxonomy, ichnodiversities, individual abundances and overall bioturbation indices. The Balanoglossites ichnofabric

Long-term changes in flood activity have often been reconstructed to understand their relationships to climate changes. This requires identification of flood layers according to certain characteristics (e.g., texture, geochemical composition, grain-size) and then to count them using naked-eye observation. This method is, however, time-consuming, and intrinsically characterized by a low resolution that

The Sakmarian–Kungurian (Early Permian) carbonate mounds of the Amushan Formation of the Deyanqimiao section in eastern Inner Mongolia, North China comprise phylloid algae-echinoderm mound, fusulinid-echinoderm mound and echinoderm mound. They were constructed by repeating the following steps in the mid-ramp and outer ramp environments: 1) skeletal grains accumulated in situ, or after short-distance

Peritidal carbonate-evaporite successions, since they are developed in the transition between continental and marine realms, provide essential keys for palaeobathymetric and palaeoclimatic interpretations. As a result, several facies models have been proposed to assist on the interpretation of ancient tidal flat deposits, and peritidal successions have been extensively used for cyclicity analyses.

The expansion of ice sheets over soft, sandy substrates was widespread in the Early Palaeozoic, during the Late Ordovician glaciation of North Africa and Arabia. Similarly, large parts of southern Africa were glaciated by soft bedded ice sheets in the Late Palaeozoic Ice Age. An unanswered question is the extent to which subglacial deformation involved the passive recycling of unconsolidated materials

Manchuriophycus-like elliptical cracks are found in thin mudstone layers and lenses intercalated with wave-rippled lacustrine sandstone beds of the Lower Cretaceous Jinju Formation, South Korea. The cracks are interpreted as intrastratal shrinkage cracks formed by liquidization and injection of sand, hydroplastic deformation of mud, and concomitant dewatering of the sediments in water-saturated conditions

This article presents a series of stratigraphic forward simulations of deep lacustrine sedimentary fills of continental multi-segment rift basins. These models integrate basin filling with the evolution of the extrabasinal catchment area, and relate tectonism and precipitation fluctuations to changes in lake level and sediment supply. The models reproduce the physical processes acting on the whole

The history of the East Asian monsoon and the relationship between the development of the monsoon climate, tectonics and global climate are complicated and controversial. Earlier studies have indicated that the East Asian monsoon fluctuated in the Asian interior during the Pliocene. Thus, the chemical weathering record in coastal regions of East Asia can be the key to elucidating its evolution as well

We conducted flume experiments to examine the effects of grain size on the distribution of tsunami deposits, using well-sorted quartz sand with median diameters (D50) of 0.064, 0.134, 0.215, and 0.250 mm. In these experiments, we investigated deposits transported onto a flat terrestrial area by a single tsunami-like bore without a strong backwash flow. The post-tsunami distributions of the coarser

Understanding the spatial-temporal pattern of sedimentary dynamics on tidal flats is important for examining their ecological function and evolutionary trend. In this study, the dynamic state of sediments across an open-coast tidal flat of the meso-tidal Changjiang Estuary, China, on a monthly scale from December 2014 to June 2016 was examined, based on a high-spatial-resolution sedimentological-topographic

Three sedimentary sequences from a coastal wetland behind a sand barrier, on the west coast of d'Urville Island, New Zealand, were examined using a multi-proxy approach, including sedimentological, geochemical and microfossil (diatom) analyses, with the chronology established using radiocarbon and 210Pb dating. Data show that a brackish lagoon started developing 7300 year ago after formation of the

The hydrodynamic impact contributes to the initiation of subaerial boulder transport by tsunamis and tsunami-like flows. Here, we consider two approaches to modelling this impact force—hydrostatic and hydrodynamic—and assess the suitability of each in boulder transport models. The model proposed, solved as an ordinary differential equation, eliminates the need to assume a conservative value of flow

The ability to trace and quantify sediment provenance in northwestern Patagonia is increasingly needed to properly understand modern sediment erosion and transport processes in this rapidly changing environment, and to accurately interpret sediment records from adjacent basins in terms of climate and environmental change. Nonetheless, no study so far has systematically evaluated the effectiveness of

Large carbonate microbialite build-ups are relatively uncommon in ancient fresh-water lacustrine basins as compared with those marine and saline environments. This paper discusses the formation of a large continental lacustrine deposit, the Oligocene-Miocene Carinao Formation in Argentina, which contains large bioherms. The lacustrine formation occurs in N-S corridor and is mostly composed by meter

We examined the effect of the coastal forest on tsunami sediment movement on the Sendai Plain, Japan, during the 2011 Tohoku tsunami using a numerical simulation of sediment transport. To account for the variable roughness coefficient in the coastal forest, a composite equivalent roughness coefficient was adopted. The simulated mean concentration of suspended sediment, wave height, flow velocity, and

Understanding the variability of depositional environment and depositional processes of the Late Permian Kuishan Member, North China Craton, is crucial for unraveling the evolution of sedimentary basin and epicontinental sea in Shandong tectonic domain. The Kuishan Member in the Eastern Block of the North China Craton, formed in association with general regression of an epicontinental sea, is composed

The Sines Contourite Drift (SCD), located in the Alentejo margin, southwest Iberian continental margin, has been through many depositional phases in result of climatic variations and bottom current oscillations, which determined a variable depositional pattern and an irregular sedimentary evolution since the Late Pleistocene. The SCD, being in the main path of the Mediterranean Outflow Water (MOW)

Our current knowledge of deep-water depositional systems is mainly built of extensive achievements obtained from marine basins. Although lacustrine basins are important oil & gas productive areas of the world, gravity-induced deposits in these basins are poorly understood in the literature when compared with those documented in marine basins. Based on new insights from 3D seismic data, this paper attempts

Outcrops of Neogene carbonates of the North Brazilian platform occur exclusively along the equatorial coast and represent some of the few existing examples of Neogene carbonate systems of the Atlantic coast of South America. The Pirabas Formation (early-middle Miocene) is the northernmost part of this platform. Although onshore mainly consists of small and scattered outcrops, it considerably extends

The ~125 m thick lower to lowermost upper Sinemurian peritidal to shallow subtidal platform carbonates in the Llevant Mountains of Mallorca (Spain) have been analysed from four stratigraphic sections, to provide new data on the hierarchical stacking pattern of high-frequency depositional sequences. Due to the fact that in shallow water environments the stacking of carbonate facies can be controlled

The Khor Al Adaid embayment of southern Qatar represents a unique shallow-water mixed siliciclastic‑carbonate coastal depositional system that developed in a hyper-arid climatic setting over the past 6000 years. The embayment, which was formed during the Flandrian transgression as a result of flooding across a partially fault-controlled incised fluvial drainage, is supplied by quartz-rich sands delivered

High-resolution sedimentary records reveal the patterns of weathering and erosion in response to climate change, environmental variability, and human activity. Here, we present major and trace element data, SrNd isotopic compositions, and mass accumulation rates (MARs) for the siliciclastic sediment fraction of a relatively high-resolution sedimentary archive from the southern Okinawa Trough, East

Recent advances in laser-ablation inductively coupled-plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) in-situ U-Pb radiometric dating and clumped isotope thermometry (Δ47) of carbonate minerals provide potential for refining the fluid flow and diagenetic history of carbonate successions. In this study, the Middle Permian dolomites proximal to the Longmenshan fold and thrust belt in northwest Sichuan Basin, southwest