Abstract
Numerical age-dating and long-range intra- and interbasin correlation have been hampered in the petroleum-bearing Miocene Monterey Formation of California. This stems mainly from the poor preservation of age-diagnostic siliceous microfossils, the majority of which were totally destroyed by wholesale diagenesis during burial. Paleomagnetism offers a powerful stratigraphic tool of great promise for absolute age-dating in the Monterey and, for this reason, the authors are conducting a detailed study of the Monterey in five widely separated basins in coastal California. The results of their study of the Monterey at Shell Beach (Pismo basin) and Point Ano Nuevo (outer Santa Cruz basin), which is the only study that provides precise numerical ages for the Monterey rocks, clearly confirm the potential that paleomagnetism and magnetostratigraphy hold toward improving their basic understanding of the Monterey Formation.
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