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The Vizcaíno terrane: another occurrence of Upper Triassic shallow-marine carbonates in Mexico

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Abstract

Outcrops of Upper Triassic carbonates of shallow-marine character are rare in Mexico. Another locality, next to the Antimonio depositional system (ADS) in Sonora, is found on the Vizcaíno terrane (Baja California Sur), near the village of San Hipólito. The outcropping formation is named after the nearby village and represents an arc-ophiolite assemblage. The formation comprises a limestone breccia, which includes re-worked Upper Norian shallow-water limestone. In addition, questionable lowermost Rhaetian radiolarians have been found in some clasts of the breccia. Accordingly, the breccia member possibly deposited during the uppermost Norian–lowermost Rhaetian. Based on their preservation, 43 clasts representative of the main lithologies have been sampled along a 550-m-long outcrop surface. Some authors proposed the Vizcaíno to have been in close relation to the ADS in north-western Sonora. It has been proposed that the Antimonio served as the source of the limestone clasts contained within the San Hipólito Formation. Petrographic analysis and micropaleontologic evidences, however, indicate a more distal relationship between the two systems. Furthermore, the microfacies proposed by the hierarchical clustering include some rather poorly constraint facies. This could be explained by the facts that (a) the samples have derived from clasts that not necessarily represent a stratigraphic succession and (b) multiple systems could have contributed to the assemblage.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Carlos M. Gonález-León (Univsersidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM), and Jaime Morals Villavicencio (El Vizcaino Biosphere Reserve) for their substantial help in organizing and executing the field campaign. Also, we would like to thank Carlos M. González-León (UNAM) and George Stanley Jr. (University of Montana) for discussions on the samples and their geodynamic implications. Our thanks extend to Luka Gale (Geological Survey of Slovenia) and Sylvain Rigaud (Nanyang Technological University) for their help in determination of the found foraminifers. We thank the reviewers for their comments on the manuscript that helped to improve it substantially. The field work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (Grant # 200020-137661 to R. Martini).

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  1. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Geneva, 13 Rue des Maraîchers, 1205, Geneva, Switzerland

    Eric Heerwagen & Rossana Martini

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  1. Eric Heerwagen
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Correspondence to Eric Heerwagen.

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Heerwagen, E., Martini, R. The Vizcaíno terrane: another occurrence of Upper Triassic shallow-marine carbonates in Mexico. Facies 66, 8 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10347-019-0592-1

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