Marine Diagenesis in Devonian Reef Complexes of the Canning Basin, Western Australia

Abstract

Marine diagenesis is widely recognized as a critical process in the development of reef complexes, both ancient and modern (James and Choquette 1983, James and Ginsburg 1979, Krebs 1969, Mountjoy and Krebs 1983, Playford 1980, 1984, Purser 1969, Schroeder 1972, Walls and Burrowes 1985). Marine cementation, together with frame-building reef organisms, is largely responsible for building reefs into rigid, wave-resistant structures with positive relief above the seafloor. Indeed, it has been suggested for some reefs that cementation was the dominant reef-building process and that they should therefore be regarded as inorganic “reefs” (Schmidt 1977).