Tectono-Stratigraphic Note: Time calibration of late Carboniferous, Permian and Early Triassic Arabian stratigraphy to orbital-forcing predictions

Abstract

The recent publication of GTS 2004 (Gradstein et al., 2004) provides an opportunity to recalibrate in time the late Carboniferous, Permian and Early Traissic Arabian Stratigraphy (GeoArabia Special Publication 3, Edited by Al-Husseini, 2004) as represented by the rock units in subsurface Interior Oman (Osterloff et al., 2004a, b) and the Haushi-Huqf Uplift region (Angiolini et al., 2004) (Figure). Additionally, sequence stratigraphic models of orbital forcing (Matthews and Frohlich, 2002; Immenhauser and Matthews, 2004) provide new insights in regards to the time calibration of depositional sequences: the “Rosetta Stone” approach. The Rosetta Stone approach predicts that the period of a third-order depositional sequence is 2.430 ± 0.405 my (denoted DS3 and here adjusted to increase the fourth-order ‘geological tuning fork’ from 0.404 to 0.405 my based on Laskar et al., 2004). The present calibration is also tied to the orbital-forcing model developed by R.K. Matthews (in Al-Husseini and Matthews, 2005; this issue of GeoArabia) that predicts that a second-order depositional sequence (denoted DS2) consists of six DS3s that were deposited in a period of about 14.58 my (6 x 2.430 my); the DS2 being bounded by two regional second-order sequence boundaries (SB2) corresponding to sea-level maximum regression surfaces.