Submarine glide blocks from the Lower Cretaceous of the Antarctic Peninsula

Isolated exotic blocks of late Jurassic age occur within an undeformed succession of marine Lower Cretaceous back‐arc basin deposits on the west coast of James Ross Island, Antarctica. These flat, tabular slabs range up to 200 × 800 m in cross‐section and lie concordant with the enclosing Cretaceous strata. Although mainly undeformed, one block displays a range of emplacement‐related deformation structures, comparable in many respects to tectonic fabrics produced by simple shear. Emplacement by submarine block gliding is proposed, possibly as the final phase in the evolution of a composite mass transport event. Derivation of such gigantic slabs requires the existence of a steep, highly unstable basin margin during the early Cretaceous. In more complex terranes, differentiation between gravity slides and thrust slices can be difficult. Clearly, internal and marginal disruption of an allochthonous unit is not diagnostic since structures developed within a lithified block during submarine gliding may closely mimic tectonic fabrics. Where contact relationships are ambiguous, emplacement by gravity sliding is suggested by the increasing intensity of internal disruption towards the basal margin and by the style of deformation, reflecting simple shear under low overburden

The anatomy of an early Dinantian terraced floodplain: palaeoenvironment and early diagenesis

The lowermost Carboniferous rocks in the Cockburnspath area of east Berwickshire (southern Scotland) are interpreted as coastal floodplain sediments. A lower mudstone-dominated unit is composed of silty mudstones and shales with subordinate sandstones and argillaceous ferroan dolomites (cementstones). These are interpreted as distal floodplain sediments with periodic crevasse-splay deposition. The dark grey colour of the mudrocks suggests deposition in reducing conditions, probably in floodplain lakes. Most of the cementstones are concretionary, some with septarian cracks, suggesting an early diagenetic origin. An immature palaeosol suggests periodic pedogenesis under improved drainage. A synsedimentary erosion surface indicates incision of a valley into the floodplain, presumably in response to base-level lowering. An upper sandstone-dominated unit starts with fine-grained rippled sandstones, cut by small channel sandstones. These are interpreted as floodplain lake deposits fed by crevasse channels. A distinctive conglomerate with cementstone clasts, wood fragments and fish remains is interpreted as a major overbank deposit, dumped into a pre-existing floodplain lake. A bivalve fauna was established in the overlying mudstones, followed by a thin limestone with a restricted marine fossil assemblage, showing that seawater flooding of the lakes occurred at times. Mudrocks throughout the sequence contain no pyrite, except for the marine band which has an organic-carbon/sulphur ratio and degree of pyritization value typical of marine sediments. The concretionary cementstones have d13C values around —4 to —6%0/00 PDB which are interpreted as indicative of anaerobic oxidation of organic matter. The combined geochemical data suggest a significant involvement of iron reduction in cementstone formation, although the d13C values are ambiguous in assessing the relative involvement of methanogenesis and methane oxidation. Limited seawater inundation of the floodplains might have supplied magnesium and calcium ions for dolomite formation assuming that any H2S derived as a result of sulphate reduction was oxidized by iron reduction. Alternatively a weathering source for solutes might have been involved