An Attempt for Construction of Carbonate Platform Geometry from Devonian Hajigak Formation, Central Afghanistan, with the Help of Facies Analysis and Petrography

Abstract

The subject of sedimentology fundamentally remained subdivided into two sectors viz. siliciclastic and carbonate with the understanding that these two systems are mutually dissociative in terms of their genesis. Even in the highly referred textbooks, siliciclastics and carbonates are always discussed in separate sections. Presumably, the limited occurrences of mixed siliciclastic-carbonate sediments in nature are because of constraining effects that siliciclastics have on carbonate-secreting organisms; the two sediments rarely found mutually associated in nature. Although the mixed carbonate-siliciclastic sediments are subordinate in occurrence, their presence in some instances proved that they do not represent any geological oddity. Rather, their sediment logical history may tell us a great deal about the dynamics and interactions of facies, paleoecologies of many carbonate-secreting organisms, and tectonic histories of depositional basins. Keeping this in mind, the present study attempted to recognize and draw the paleoenvironmental conditions and processes of the Devonian Hajigak Formation, Afghanistan by means of detailed facies analysis and petrographical signatures. An attempt has also been made to characterize sandstone wedges that punctuate the carbonate succession and some variable deposits of shales and marls.