A tsunami deposit in the Stonewall Formation (Upper Ordovician), northeastern margin of the Williston Basin, Canada, and its tectonic and stratigraphic implications

Abstract

The dolomudstone of the Stonewall Formation was deposited on the present-day northeastern side of the low-relief, relatively shallow, tropical Williston Basin of central Laurentia during the latest Ordovician. This unit hosts a geographically widespread carbonate conglomerate, up to 0.5 m thick and consisting of rudstone to floatstone, that thins and eventually disappears westward and southward. The bed contains dolomudstone intraclasts in a variably argillaceous dolomudstone matrix and varies in composition laterally and vertically. Intraclasts range from millimetres to centimetres in size, are spheroidal to tabular to irregular in shape, and are angular to rounded. They record incipient microcrystalline calcite precipitation in localised domains in lime mud that began just below the sediment–water interface, forming lightly cemented nodules in an unconsolidated matrix, and indicate exhumation and deposition by a single, short-duration, high-energy but variable event that fragmented and abraded many of the nodules and washed in clay and lime mud. The composite nature of the bed in terms of varying proportion of intraclasts versus mud, and range of intraclast size with variable rounding and sorting, suggest that the event fluctuated in intensity and current direction. We interpret this bed as having been formed by a succession of tsunami waves and backwash that scoured the sea bottom and reworked the nodules, and brought in suspended illite from shallow water and the adjacent land surface. Despite drainage from tsunami-inundated coastal areas, the absence of allochthonous quartz sand and silt suggests that there was no sediment of this size stored there. Backwash transport may also have played a role in the formation of argillaceous marker beds which have been attributed previously to sea level fall and subaerial exposure. Other anomalous beds that punctuate shallow epeiric sea successions may also be tsunami deposits, especially if the ambient paleoclimate and bathymetry were not conducive to generating or leaving a signal of major storms, and sea level fluctuation can be discounted.