Abstract
Tepee structures are forming today about the edges of a number of Holocene groundwater lakes (coastal salinas) in the coastal zone of South Australia. Tepees form by the groundwater-induced deformation of an extensive sheet of fenestral limestone known as a veneer boundstone. Underlying the veneer boundstone is an extremely porous aquifer known as a boxwork boundstone. Areas of groundwater resurgence in these salinas are characterized by an association of tepee structures, boxwork boundstones and stromatolites. The tepees in these salinas are termed groundwater or boxwork tepees to emphasize the importance of resurging groundwater in their formation. Preliminary studies of tepee structures in the back-reef strata of Guadalupian age in the Guadalupe Mountains of West Texas and New Mexico has shown that these tepees are also groundwater tepees. Such tepee structures in the Guadalupe Mountains are often associated with remnants of an underlying boxwork boundstone and/or an underlying sandy palaeoaquifer. They are tepees which formed in zones of groundwater resurgence at a time when the nearby “reef” was a subaerially exposed barrier. Limestone sheets composed of vadose pisolites were deformed coincident with tepee formation. This association implies that vadose pisolites, like tepees, formed in areas of periodic groundwater resurgence characterized by a complex schizohaline hydrological regime.
Published Version
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