--> High-Resolution Eustatic Sea Level Reconstruction Across the Devonian-Carboniferous Boundary From the Tri-State Area of Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri: Conodonts, Carbon Isotopes, and Sequence Stratigraphy of the Type Kinderhookian Region

AAPG ACE 2018

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High-Resolution Eustatic Sea Level Reconstruction Across the Devonian-Carboniferous Boundary From the Tri-State Area of Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri: Conodonts, Carbon Isotopes, and Sequence Stratigraphy of the Type Kinderhookian Region

Abstract

Devonian-Carboniferous boundary interval (late Famennian – early Tournaisian) strata contain some of the most important unconventional resources in the North America, including the Bakken Formation in the Williston Basin, and the Exshaw/Banff Formations in south Alberta. Although the lithostratigraphic variability and basin history of the Bakken have been intensively studied, precise global correlation with strata outside of the Williston Basin has been hampered by minimal and inconsistent biostratigraphic practice, a dearth of long-line global geochemical data through this interval, and a general inability to correlate Bakken strata with global strata on a sub-biozone level that would allow precise global sequence stratigraphic correlation.

The earliest Mississippian stage, the Kinderhookian Stage in North America (Tournaisian Stage globally), has its type area in the Mississippi Valley of western Illinois. The tri-state area of southeast Iowa, western Illinois, and northeastern Missouri contains some of the historically most important reference sections for Fammenian-Kinderhookian strata on Earth. Unfortunately, these strata have not been studied in comprehensive stratigraphic detail in several decades. The platform to basin transects across this interval provide an ideal testing ground to develop high-resolution eustatic sea-level curves across this critical interval of Earth history that can help to inform basin development models within the Williston Basin, and elsewhere globally. The relatively stable cratonic interior of the United State midcontinent, combined with the mixed carbonate-clastic setting of the edge of the impending Burlington Shelf of the early Osagean provide an ideal natural laboratory to investigate global sea level changes.

The present study integrates all available (and new) bio-, chemo-, litho-, and sequence stratigraphic data from the tri-state area of the U.S. midcontinent to provide a detailed and high-resolution (sub-biozone) chronostratigraphic framework for sea level fluctuations across the Devonian-Carboniferous Boundary and through the Tournaisian (Kinderhookian-Osagean). The sequence stratigraphy developed in the Tri-State type region can be directly compared to the data from the Williston Basin and will hopefully serve to improve the chronostratigraphic framework, depositional models, and help constrain reservoir and source rock variability within a robust event-based stratigraphic framework.