Field Excursions from the 2021 GSA Section Meetings
The 2021 GSA Northeastern, Southeastern, joint North-Central/South-Central, and Cordilleran Section Meet-ings were held virtually in spring 2021 during continued restrictions on travel and large gatherings due to COVID-19. Eleven groups put together field guides, taking participants on treks to states from Connecticut to Nevada in the United States, to Mexico, and to Italy, and covering topics as varied as bedrock geologic map-ping, geochemistry, paleodrainage, barrier islands, karst, spring systems, a southern Appalachian transect, Ordo-vician and Mississippian stratigraphy, high-energy events, Cretaceous arc granites and dextral shear zones, and Mesoproterozoic igneous rocks. This volume serves as a valuable resource for those wishing to discover, learn more about, and travel through these geologically fascinating areas.
An Upper Cretaceous paleodrainage system on the Coastal Plain unconformity of Alabama-Georgia
*Emails: [email protected]; [email protected].
*Emails: [email protected]; [email protected].
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Published:September 24, 2021
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CiteCitation
Clinton Barineau*, Diana Ortega-Ariza*, 2021. "An Upper Cretaceous paleodrainage system on the Coastal Plain unconformity of Alabama-Georgia", Field Excursions from the 2021 GSA Section Meetings, Joan Florsheim, Christian Koeberl, Matthew P. McKay, Nancy Riggs
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ABSTRACT
Rocks of the Upper Cretaceous Tuscaloosa Formation (Cenomanian) and Eutaw Formation (Santonian) in southwestern Georgia and southeastern Alabama record an interval of fluvial and nearshore marine deposition. In the vicinity of Columbus, Georgia, basal units of the Tuscaloosa Formation consist of a residual paleosol built on crystalline rocks of the Appalachian Piedmont covered by conglomeratic sandstones deposited in braided stream systems flowing across the mid-Cenomanian Coastal Plain unconformity. The unconformity, which separates Cretaceous detrital rocks from underlying metamorphic rocks and residual paleosols built on those metamorphic rocks, lies primarily within the Tuscaloosa Formation in this region and is marked at the modern surface by the geomorphic Fall Line. Mapping of the unconformity across the region reveals areas of significant paleorelief associated with a number of distinct paleovalleys incised into the mid-Cenomanian surface. The most distinct of these lie immediately east of the Alabama-Georgia state line, within 15 km of the modern Lower Chattahoochee River Valley. Spatially, these distinct paleovalleys lie immediately north of a Santonian estuarine environment recorded in the Eutaw Formation, disconformably above the Tuscaloosa Formation. Collectively, paleo-valleys in the mid-Cenomanian surface, the fluvial nature of the Tuscaloosa Formation in southwestern Georgia and southeastern Alabama, and the estuarine environment in the younger Eutaw Formation suggest a persistent (~10 m.y.) paleodrainage system that may be a forerunner to the modern Chattahoochee River.
- Alabama
- Appalachians
- Cenomanian
- Chattahoochee River
- coastal plains
- Cretaceous
- drainage patterns
- Eutaw Formation
- Fall Line
- field trips
- fluvial environment
- Georgia
- guidebook
- marine environment
- Mesozoic
- nearshore environment
- North America
- Piedmont
- road log
- Santonian
- Tuscaloosa Formation
- unconformities
- United States
- Upper Cretaceous