Stratigraphy and Depositional Environments of Fox Hills Formation in Williston Basin

Daniel J. Daly

The Fox Hills Formation (Maestrichtian), representing part of a regressive wedge deposited during the withdrawal of the sea from the Western Interior at the close of the Cretaceous, consists of marginal marine strata transitional between the offshore deposits of the underlying Pierre Shale and the terrestrial deltaic and coastal deposits of the overlying Hell Creek Formation. An investigation of outcrops of the Fox Hills Formation along the western and southern flanks of the Williston basin and study of over 300 oil and gas well logs from the central part of the basin indicate that the formation can be divided both stratigraphically and areally. Stratigraphically, the Fox Hills can be divided into lower and upper sequences; the lower includes the Trail City and Timber Lak Members, and the upper sequence includes the Colgate Member in the west and the Iron Lightning and Linton Members in the east. Areally, the formation can be divided into a northeastern and western part, where the strata are 30-45 m thick and are dominated by the lower sequence, and into a southeastern area where both the lower and upper sequences are well developed in a section 80-130 m thick. Typically, the lower Fox Hills consists of upward-coarsening shoreface or delta-front sequences containing hummocky bedding and a limited suite of trace fossils, most notably Ophiomorpha. In the southeast, however, these strata are dominated by bar complexes, oriented northeast-southwest, composed of cross-bedded medium to very fine-grained sand with abundant trace and body fossils. The upper Fox ills represents a variety of shoreface, deltaic, and channel environments. The strata of the Fox Hills Formation exhibit facies similar to those reported for Upper Cretaceous gas reservoirs in the northern Great Plains.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #91033©1988 AAPG Rocky Mountain Section, Bismarck, North Dakota, 21-24 August 1988