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GEOREF RECORD

Miocene stratigraphy and paleontology of Palos Verdes Hills, California

Wendell Phillips Woodring, Milton Nunn Bramlette and Robert Minssen Kleinpell
Miocene stratigraphy and paleontology of Palos Verdes Hills, California
Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (February 1935) 20 (2): 125-159

Abstract

The Miocene of the Palos Verdes Hills embraces a thickness of about 2,500 feet of rocks here designated as Monterey shale, and the base is not exposed in the region where the oldest beds crop out. Five main lithologic units are recognized, consisting, in ascending order, principally of silty shale, porcelaneous and cherty shale, phosphatic shale, diatomite, and radiolarian mudstone. Three local members are named and mapped, the lowest one of which includes three of the main lithologic units and also two named tuff beds. Foraminifera are found in all the main units and are assigned to nine faunal zones indicating a time range extending from early Middle Miocene to the top of the Upper Miocene, as these terms are generally used in Coast Range chronology. These beds overlap northward onto a schist basement of Franciscan (?) rocks, and this northward overlap apparently continues to the Torrance and Playa del Rey oil fields in the southern part of the adjoining Los Angeles Basin. Mollusks from detrital rocks at the base of the overlapping beds on the north slope of the hills represent a fauna that in many respects is a new one for the Coast Ranges, as it includes a number of tropical genera not heretofore recorded there.


ISSN: 0883-9247
Serial Title: Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists
Serial Volume: 20
Serial Issue: 2
Title: Miocene stratigraphy and paleontology of Palos Verdes Hills, California
Pages: 125-159
Published: 193502
Text Language: English
Publisher: American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Tulsa, OK, United States
Accession Number: 1939-021393
Categories: Areal geology
Document Type: Serial
Bibliographic Level: Analytic
Illustration Description: 1 pl. geol. map, 2 figs., 1936: abstracts, Vol. 19, No. 12, p. 1842
N33°45'00" - N33°45'00", W118°22'00" - W118°22'00"
Source Note: World Petroleum, p. 204, April 1936.
Country of Publication: United States
Secondary Affiliation: GeoRef, Copyright 2019, American Geosciences Institute. Reference includes data from Bibliography and Index of North American Geology, U. S. Geological Survey, Reston, VA, United States
Update Code: 1939
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