Tidal Sedimentation from a Fluvial to Estuarine Transition, Douglas Group, Missourian--Virgilian, Kansas

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Tonganoxie Sandstone Member of the Stranger Formation (Douglas Group, Upper Pennsylvanian, Kansas) was deposited in a funnel-shaped, northeast-southwest-trending paleovalley that was incised during the uppermost Missourian sealevel lowstand and backfilled during the subsequent transgression. Quarry exposures of the Tonganoxie near Ottawa, Kansas, include 5 m of sheetlike, vertically accreted siltstones and sandy siltstones, bounded above and below by thin coals with upright plant fossils and paleosols. Strata range from submillimeter-thick, normally graded rhythmites to graded bedsets up to 12.5 cm thick with a vertical sedimentary structure sequence (VSS) consisting of the following intervals: (A) a basal massive to normally grad d interval; (B) a parallel-laminated interval; (C) a ripple-cross-laminated interval; and (D) an interval of draped lamination. The VSS-C intervals of thicker bedsets are characterized by climbing ripples that evolve from Type A (erosional-stoss) to Type B (depositional-stoss). Synsedimentary convolutions at the tops of many climbing-ripple sequences and a variety of water-escape structures indicate rapid deposition. The vertical sequence of sedimentary structures indicates each bedset was deposited by a waning current with significant suspended load. The Tonganoxie succession has many similarities to fluvial overbank/floodplain deposits: sheetlike geometry, upright plant fossils, lack of bioturbation and body fossils, dominance of silt, and a punctuated style of rapid sedimentation from suspension-laden waning currents. Missing, however, are thick clay drapes or evidence of prolonged exposure and desiccation, which generally characterize a floodplain sequence with seasonal overbanking. Physical and biogenic sedimentary structures--including tetrapod trackways, surface grazing traces, abundant raindrop impressions, wind ripples, runnel marks, runnel marks, and runoff washouts--indicate that subaerial exposure was periodic and brief, and may have followed each sedimentation event. Analysis of stratum-thickness variations through the succession suggests that tides significantly influenced sediment deposition. Strata ranging through three orders of magnitude systematically thicken and thin, recording the influence of an ebb-dominated, diurnal tidal system with a well developed semimonthly inequality. By conservative estimate of sedimentation rates based on neap-spring tidal cycles, the sequence aggraded at an average rate of approximately 3.8 m/yr. These unusually high rates appear to have prevailed for only a short time and were probably spatially restricted within the basin. A fluvial-to-estuarine transitional depositional setting is interpreted for the Tonganoxie by analogy with modern depositional settings that show similar physical and biogenic sedimentary s ructures, vertical sequences of sedimentary structures, and aggradation rates.