Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T22:58:23.107Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Deltaic sedimentation in an unstable tectonic environment – the Lower Limestone Group (Lower Carboniferous) of East Fife, Scotland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

C. R. Fielding ,
M. Al-Rubaii  and
E. K. Walton
C. R. Fielding
Affiliation:
Department of Geology & Mineralogy, University of Queensland, St Lucia, Queensland, Australia, 4067
M. Al-Rubaii
Affiliation:
Department of Geology, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife, KY16 9ST, United Kingdom
E. K. Walton
Affiliation:
Department of Geology, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife, KY16 9ST, United Kingdom
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The Lower Limestone Group, which outcrops extensively on the east coast of Fife, southeast Scotland, consists of interbedded sandstones, siltstones and claystones with occasional coal seams, and limestone beds. Several of the coals have been mined economically in the past.

The sequence was deposited in a shallow-water, deltaic setting. Three facies associations have been distinguished; (1) laminated claystones, and marine bioclastic limestones, which were deposited in prodelta and marine shelf environments, (2) crudely coarsening-upward sandstone units, interpreted as delta front deposits of fluvially-dominated though wave-influenced, shallow-water deltas, and (3) interbedded clastic sedimentary rocks and coals, deposited in delta plain environments. The sequence as a whole accumulated by repeated progradation and abandonment of deltaic complexes.

Palaeosol profiles of four types are superbly preserved within the delta plain facies association. These are (1) organic soils (peats), now coal seams, (2) gley palaeosols, which formed in persistently waterlogged conditions, (3) freely drained soils which formed on a quartz sand-rich substrate, and (4) similar profiles formed by free drainage through variable substrates and involving B horizon accumulation of concretionary iron oxides. Compound palaeosols are common.

Deposition of the Lower Limestone Group was influenced by the tectonic and volcanic instability of the Fife area during Visean times. Frequent seismic events centred on active fault lines caused local uplift of parts of the normally waterlogged delta plain environment, allowing the formation of well-drained soils. Peats (coals) were best developed and least affected by oxidation in an elongate, fault bounded zone of enhanced subsidence.

Type
Articles
Information
Geological Magazine , Volume 125 , Issue 3 , May 1988 , pp. 241 - 255
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Belt, E. S. 1975. Scottish Carboniferous cyclothem patterns and their palaeoenvironmental significance. In Deltas – Models for Exploration (ed. Broussard, M. L.), pp. 427–49, Houston Geological Society.Google Scholar
Belt, E. S. 1984. Origin of Late Dinantian cyclothems, East Fife, Scotland. In Compte Rendu, 9th International Congress on Carboniferous Stratigraphy and Geology, 3, pp. 570–88, Champaign, Illinois 1979.Google Scholar
Besly, B. M. & Fielding, C. R. 1988. Palaeosols in Westphalian coal-bearing and red-bed sequences, Central and Northern England. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology (in press).Google Scholar
Browne, M. A. E. 1986. The classification of the Lower Carboniferous in Fife and Lothian. In Sedimentology and Hydrocarbon Potential of the Dinantian Oil-Shales of Northern Britain, pp. 15–19, British Sedimentological Research Group, Abstracts.Google Scholar
Chisholm, J. I. 1970. Teichichnus and related trace-fossils in the Lower Carboniferous of St Monance, Scotland. Bulletin of the Geological Survey of Great Britain No. 32, 21–51.Google Scholar
Coleman, J. M. 1966. Ecological changes in a massive, freshwater clay sequence. Transactions of the Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies 16, 159–74.Google Scholar
Coleman, J. M. & Prior, D. B. 1980. Deltaic Sand Bodies. Short Course Notes 15, American Association of Petroleum Geologists.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Donaldson, A. C., Martin, R. H. & Kanes, W. H. 1970. Holocene Guadeloupe delta of the Texas Gulf Coast. In Deltaic Sedimentation, Modern and Ancient (ed. Morgan, J. P.), pp. 107–37, Society of Economic Palaeontologists and Mineralogists Special Publication 15.Google Scholar
Dott, R. H. & Bourgeois, J. 1982. Hummocky cross-stratification: significance of its variable bedding sequences. Bulletin of the Geological Society of America 93, 663–80.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duchaufour, P. 1982. Pedology (translated by T. R. Paton), 448 pp. London: Allen and Unwin.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elliott, R. E. 1968. Facies, sedimentation successions and cyclothems in Productive Coal Measures in the East Midlands, Great Britain. The Mercian Geologist 2, 351–72.Google Scholar
Fielding, C. R. 1984. Upper delta plain lacustrine and fluviolacustrine facies from the Westphalian of Durham Coalfield, NE England. Sedimentology 31, 547–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fielding, C. R. 1986. Fluvial channel and overbank deposits from the Westphalian of the Durham coalfield, NE England. Sedimentology, 33, 119–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Forsyth, I. H. & Chisholm, J. I. 1977. The Geology of East Fife. Memoir of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, 284 pp.Google Scholar
Francis, E. H. 1983. Carboniferous. In Geology of Scotland (2nd Edition) (ed. Craig, G. Y.), Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press. 472 pp.Google Scholar
Frazier, D. E. 1967. Recent deltaic deposits of the Mississippi delta: their development and chronology. Transactions of the Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies 17, 287–315.Google Scholar
Geikie, A. 1902. The Geology of Eastern Fife. Memoir of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, 385 pp.Google Scholar
Gjelberg, J. 1977. Facies analysis of the coal-bearing Vesalstranda Member (Upper Devonian) of Bjornoya. Norsk Polarsinstitutt Arbok 1977 pp. 71–100.Google Scholar
Goodlet, G. A. 1957. Lithological variation in the Lower Limestone Group in the Midland valley of Scotland. Bulletin of the Geological Survey of Great Britain 12, 52–65.Google Scholar
Greensmith, J. T. 1965. Calciferous Sandstone Series sedimentation at the eastern end of the Midland valley of Scotland. Journal of Sedimentary Petrology 35, 223–42.Google Scholar
Hempton, M. R. & Dewey, J. F. 1983. Earthquake-induced deformational structures in young lacustrine sediments, East Anatolian Fault – southeast Turkey. Tectonophysics 98, T7–T14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horne, J. C., Ferm, J. C., Caruccio, F. T. & Baganz, B. P. 1978. Depositional models in coal exploration and mine planning in the Appalachian region. Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists 62, 2379–411.Google Scholar
Kanes, W. H. 1970. Facies and development of the Colorado River Delta in Texas. In Deltaic Sedimentation, Modern and Ancient (ed. Morgan, J. P.), pp. 78–106. Society of Economic Palaeontologists and Mineralogists Special Publication 15.Google Scholar
Macgregor, A. R. 1968. Fife and Angus Geology, an Excursion Guide. pp. 189–201, Pittenween – St Monance. Edinburgh:Scottish Academic Press.Google Scholar
Meckel, L. D. 1972. Anatomy of distributary channel-fill deposits in Recent mud deltas. Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists 56, 639 (abstract).Google Scholar
Patterson, I. B. & Hall, I. H. S. 1986. Lithostratigraphy of the late Devonian and early Carboniferous rocks in the Midland Valley of Scotland. British Geological Survey Report 18, no. 3, 14 pp.Google Scholar
Percival, C. J. 1983. A definition of the term ‘ganister’. Geological Magazine 120, 187–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar