Sequence stratigraphic architecture of marine to fluvial deposits across a passive margin (Cenomanian, Atlantic margin, Morocco, Agadir transect)

Abstract

Seven sections, covering the upper Albian to lowermost Turonian, have been correlated from full-marine to continental-dominated deposits across a passive margin, along a transect 425 km long, from the present-day Atlantic coast to the ``Pre-African Trough'' between the Anti-Atlas and the High-Atlas. The thickness of the Cenomanian succession changes from around 500 metres in the fully marine sections to 250 metres in mostly continental facies in the western High-Atlas, about 150 km updip, to a few tens of metres in the Bou Tazoult area. The strata thicken again eastwards into the Pre-African Trough where they can be traced without major facies changes to the Kem Kem embayment and to the Bechar area in Algeria. Over all this eastern area, continental facies are overlain by the fully-marine shallow-water deposits of the Cenomanian-Turonian boundary interval. A first major conclusion is that fluvial aggradation in high-frequency transgressive-regressive sequences is coeval with the seaward-shift of the shoreline, in accordance with the genetic sequence stratigraphic model of GALLOWAY (1989). Both the flatness of the depositional profile and the corresponding very low energy of the marine environment during the transgressions account for the blanket of red continental clays on top of marine facies in updip depositional sequences, which is then preserved under the marine transgressive surface of the next sequence. A second major conclusion is that the high-frequency transgressive-regressive (T-R) sequences do not look like classical parasequences bounded by transgression surfaces. They usually exhibit a surface created by a sea-level fall within the regressive half-cycle. This is interpreted in the following way: regressions did not operate through a regular seaward-shift of the shoreline, but through stepped sea-level falls. The very low slope of the depositional ramp is thought to have enhanced the sequence stratigraphic record of such stepped regressions. Short-term, high-frequency sequences are organized into medium-frequency T-R sequences (seven in the Cenomanian) which show an overall aggrading and slowly retrograding pattern along the whole transect. Comparisons with other basins show that medium-frequency sequences do not fit the third-order depositional sequences described elsewhere, casting doubts about a eustatic mechanism for their deposition.