Stratigraphy and depositional environments of the Upper Cretaceous Aruma Formation, Central Saudi Arabia
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Stratigraphy and depositional environments of the Upper Cretaceous Aruma Formation, Central Saudi Arabia Khaled M. Al-Kahtany 1 & Abdelbaset S. El-Sorogy 1,2 & Mohamed Youssef 1,3 & Hisham A. Gahlan 1
Received: 25 August 2015 / Accepted: 26 January 2016 # Saudi Society for Geosciences 2016
Abstract The Upper Cretaceous Aruma Formation in central Saudi Arabia is subdivided into three members. The Khanasir Member at the base is characterized by dasycladecean-rudist biofacies. The middle Hajajah Member is characterized by coral-stromatoporoid biofacies, while the upper Lina shale Member contains few badly preserved molluscs. Fifty macrofossils species have been identified from the studied section, 25 of them belong to gastropods, 17 belong to scleractinian corals, and 8 species belong to bivalves. The identified macrofossils have close affinity to Tethyan faunas and previously known from the Cretaceous rocks in Asia, Africa, and Europe. The most recorded microfacies types are wackestones, packstones, and floatstones with green algae, benthic and rare planktonic foraminifers, ostracods, and corals. The studied section revealed a major Campanian-Maastrichtian marine transgression followed the continental siliciclastics of the Wasia Formation with progressive deepening upward, from a shallow marine lagoonal environment to relatively more open marine conditions.
Keywords Stratigraphy . Depositional environments . Upper Cretaceous . Aruma Formation . Central Saudi Arabia
* Khaled M. Al-Kahtany [email protected]
1
Department of Geology and Geophysics, College of Science, King Saud University, P.O Box: 2455, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia
2
Department of Geology, Faculty of Science, Zagazig University, Zagazig, Egypt
3
Department of Geology, Faculty of Science, South Valley University, Qena, Egypt
Introduction Since the old studies of Steineke and Bramkamp (1952); Steineke et al. (1958); Powers et al. (1966); Powers (1968), (El As’ad 1977, 1983a, b, 1984), and Vaslet et al. (1988), there are no studies dealt with stratigraphy and depositional environment of the Aruma Formation in central Saudi Arabia. Skelton and El Asa’ad (1992) identified new genus and species of canaliculated rudist from of the Campanian Khanasir Member of the Upper Cretaceous Aruma Formation in Central Saudi Arabia. Al-Furaih (1984a, 1984b, 1986) studied the Maastrichtian ostracods of Aruma Formation from Wadi alAtiq. He identified, described, and illustrated one new genus and 15 new species. Studies of Okla (1991, 1992, 1994, 1995) were on Cretaceous fossil algae, especially dasycladaceans. He identified new dasycladecean species from surface samples of the Aruma Formation in northeast of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Recently, Gameil and El-Sorogy (2015) identified 15 gastropod species from the present section, mainly from the Hajajah Member and indicated shallow marine lagoonal and relatively open marine environment. None of the last mentioned studies have dealt with stratigraphy and depositional environments; therefore, the present
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