Abstract
The Late Jurassic-Early Cretaceous Santai Formation, sporadically distributed in western Shandong Province, comprises terrestrial alluvial-eolian successions, which records regional wind patterns and paleogeography in eastern North China. This paper conducts an analysis of eolian stratification, bounding surfaces, facies architecture and paleowind direction of the Santai Formation in the east of the Mengyin Basin, western Shandong Province. Three basic types of eolian stratification are recognized in the Santai Formation, including grainflow strata, wind ripple strata and adhesion strata, and have been grouped into eolian dune and interdune facies associations. The occurrences of reactivation surfaces and superimposition surfaces within eolian dune deposits indicate active compound dunes or draas. The association of adhesion strata with grainflow or windripple strata is the development of a wet eolian system. Cross-strata dip direction indicates different paleowind directions from the lower to the upper part of the Santai paleoerg. The lower part of the paleoerg was characterized by paleowinds blowing from northwest to northeast, whereas the upper part was under the influence of paleowinds consistently towards east to northeast. The identified changes in wind directions possibly suggest wind regime shifts from monsoon circulation to westlies of planetary wind system, which may be related with the collapse of the East China Plateau during the Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous.
Highlights
The sedimentary record of eolian system, extending from the Archean to the Quaternary, is widespread on earth [1]
This paper conducts an analysis of eolian stratification, bounding surfaces, facies architecture and paleowind direction of the Santai Formation in the east of the Mengyin Basin, western Shandong Province
Three basic types of eolian stratification are recognized in the Santai Formation, including grainflow strata, wind ripple strata and adhesion strata, and have been grouped into eolian dune and interdune facies associations
Summary
The sedimentary record of eolian system, extending from the Archean to the Quaternary, is widespread on earth [1]. It contains a large amount of information on paleogeography, paleoclimate and wind regime, and provides clues on the geological evolution of desert basins and the relative role of allocyclic controls as tectonic and orbital forcing and its effects on preservation [2] [3] [4]. The Late Jurassic-Early Cretaceous erg deposits present in the Mengyin Basin would provide an excellent opportunity to analyze the eolian stratigraphic architecture, regional paleogeography and wind regime
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