Sequence Stratigraphy and Depositional Environments on a Palaeozoic Clastic Ramp Margin, Ahnet-Timimoun Basin, Algeria: ABSTRACT

Abstract

A wide, ramp margin was developed during the Devonian/Carboniferous in the Ahnet-Timimoun Basin, Algerian Sahara. Variations in relative sea level resulted in rapid, long distance (>500km) lateral translations of the clastic facies belts; this was the main influence on the locations of sand depocentres. The geometry and distribution of both Gedinnian and Emsian shallow marine sandstones is complex. Understanding the influence of relative sea level, shelf processes and local tectonics is essential to predicting the distribution of potential reservoir units. The Silurian to Carboniferous succession preserved in the Ahnet-Timimoun Basin can be divided into two major Transgressive-Regressive cycles, each of approximately 45 million years duration (Ashigill to Siegenian; Siegenian to Tournaisian). The T-R cycles several sequences of approximately 10 million years duration. Major source the basin were deposited in the Early Silurian (Llandovery) and Late Devonian (Frasnian) around the transgressive maximum of the T-R cycles. In the Ahnet-Timimoun Basin, marine sedimentation prevailed across much of the ramp margin. During Gedinnian times (early Devonian), progradational events associated with each sequence deposited a succession of extensive, shallow marine, coarsening-up sandstones. The sequence boundary marking the regressive maximum. Of the first T-R cycle (Siegenian) resulted in a rapid transition from an inner shelfmore » environment to braided rivers which deposited a regional, high N/G sandstone. Sequence boundaries, although marked by rapid basinward shifts in facies belts, are without significant fluvial incision. The transgressive sequence set in the overlying T/R cycle, is marked initially by rapid southwards directed trangression and an extensive ravinement surface of early Emsian age.« less