Abstract
Preliminary reexamination of some of the major relations along the Capitan escarpment has revealed several new aspects of stratigraphy and structure. The Queen Formation has been found southeast of Guadalupe Ridge underlying the Seven Rivers Formation and grading into the Capitan reef facies. The Queen is thought also to intergrade with the Goat Seep Dolomite at the head of North McKittrick Canyon. Therefore, either the Capitan southeast of Guadalupe Ridge is Goat Seep or the Queen in McKittrick Canyon lies unconformably on the Goat Seep. Along the lower course of North McKittrick Canyon southeasterly dipping beds overlie the Goat Seep and underlie the Capitan and basal Hegler Member of the Bell Canyon Formation. These may be upper Cherry Canyon Formation equivalents. Field geometric relations of the wedge edge of the uppermost Lamar Member of the Bell Canyon against the structureless Capitan reef suggest an approximate time-depositional equivalence of the top of the Lamar with the top of the Seven Rivers Formation. Faults along the base of the reef escarpment obscure the original relation of the Delaware basin Castile Formation with the reef, but a lower level of Lamar penetration into the reef, as well as a transitional conformity between the Bell Canyon and Castile Formations, suggests that originally the Castile may have been a facies of the upper part of the Capitan and some parts of the Yates-Tansill interval.
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