Understanding
the Evolution of Clastic Sediments from the
Das Gupta, Kanchan1,
Kevin T. Pickering1 (1)
The Paleogene
collision of the Iberian and European plates created a compact two-sided orogen, with paired fold-and-thrust belts and foreland
basins north and south of the Axial Zone in the
The Ainsa-Jaca
basin comprise ~10-12 million years of deposition of deep-marine clastics with a cumulative thickness of ~4 km and provide
an ideal natural laboratory for studying slope-basin depositional systems. The Ainsa basin contains about 20-25 deep-water sandbodies, typically 10s m thick but packaged essentially
as 7 coarse clastic depositional complexes, each in
the order of at least 100-300 m thick. This study fingerprints the sandbodies within the Ainsa-Jaca
basin as a means of correlation, in order to better constrain and understand
the evolution of the basinal sediments.
223 sandstone (arenites)
samples, fine to coarse grained, were collected from outcrops spreading
throughout the Ainsa-Jaca basin, and they
quantitatively analysed for their mineralogical and
textural composition in thin section. Different compositional (petrographic) trends and petrofacies
are identified. The composition of sandstones permits the characterization of
each depositional complex in terms of both constituents and provenance. Arenite composition in the Ainsa
basin is found to be mainly controlled by syn-sedimentary
tectonism. There is a temporal change of sediment
provenance as the basin evolved.
AAPG Search and Discover Article #90063©2007 AAPG Annual Convention, Long Beach, California