Transgressive-regressive cycles in saline lake margin oolites: paleogeographic implications (Priabonian, Vistrenque basin, SE France)

Abstract

The integrative analysis of a lacustrine carbonate succession from Butte Iouton hill (Vistrenque basin, SE France) brings new insights into depositional models and stacking patterns of oolitic saline lake margins and provides new details regarding the late Eocene paleogeography of southeast France. Depositional facies analysis and paleoenvironmental reconstructions allow reconstructing an oolitic lacustrine ramp model, displaying from the proximal to the distal areas: (1) shallow marginal saline lake domain with deposition of planar microbial laminites, and molluscan-ostracodal wackestone, (2) a more distal and open lacustrine environments with low to moderate energy characterized by the deposition of peloidal grainstones and (3) a domain of higher energy with accumulation of ooids mixed with peloids in the vicinity of the area of ooid production. Lake margin carbonate sedimentation dominantly occurred during stages of lake transgression while subaerial exposure surfaces developed during periods of negative inflow-evaporation balance (forced regression). Carbon and oxygen isotopes together with vertical trends in salinity inferred from molluscan associations show that lake transgression does not result from increasingly positive freshwater-evaporation balance volume but from the combination of subsidence and outflow from neighbouring saline waterbodies. The Butte Iouton carbonate margin is part of a set of interconnected saline lakes, occupying continental basins from Languedoc and Rhodanian region during the Priabonian, with a siliciclastic-dominated sedimentation in the southern margin, sourced by erosion of Pyrenean reliefs, and a carbonate-dominated northern margin with significant oolitic sedimentation in high-energy nearshore area.