Sedimentological and palaeoenvironmental studies on the clastic sequence of Gebel El-Zeit area, gulf of Suez, Egypt

Abstract

The present work deals with the sedimentological and palaeoenvironmental studies of the Palaeozoic clastic sequence (Cambrian?) of the Gebel El-Zeit area. The sandstones which build up the major part of this sequence are fine to coarse grained moderately to well sorted, mostly of unimodal patterns, strongly fine skewed to near symmetrical and vary from meso- to very lepto-kurtic. The grain-size parameters and their bivariate relations do not give an exact environment of deposition nevertheless, most of them have a fluviatile origin. So, the application of some of the bivariate relations to ancient sediments, which microscopically show mild or no cementation, is still valid if coupled with other parameters, such as sedimentary structures, palaeocurrent analysis and other confirmed data. The palaeocurrent analysis indicates that these sandstones came from two completely different sources. A marine transgression from the north northeast produced the Araba Formation, whereas the Naqus Formation has been interpreted as fluvial. The source is situated to the south southwest. The streams were probably very erratic and intermittent.