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Worm tubes in an allochthonous cold-seep carbonate from lower Oligocene rocks of western Washington

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 May 2016

James L. Goedert ,
Jörn Peckmann  and
Joachim Reitner
James L. Goedert
Affiliation:
1Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, University of Washington, Seattle, 98195
Jörn Peckmann
Affiliation:
2Institut und Museum für Geologie und Paläontologie, Georg-August-Universität, Goldschmidtstrasse 3, D-37077 Göttingen, Germany
Joachim Reitner
Affiliation:
2Institut und Museum für Geologie und Paläontologie, Georg-August-Universität, Goldschmidtstrasse 3, D-37077 Göttingen, Germany
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Abstract

Tubes suspected to be those of vestimentiferan worms are abundant in carbonate boulders at one locality in the lower Oligocene part of the Lincoln Creek Formation along the Canyon River, Grays Harbor County, Washington. The largest tubes exhibit the same general orientation and are arranged in clusters. The tube walls are preserved as aragonite that is, in some cases, replaced by silica. The original tube walls either had a high carbonate content or were indurated very early by aragonite mineralization of the organic wall. The carbonate cements around, on, and inside of the tubes were precipitated due to the microbial oxidation of hydrocarbons at a cold-seep. After lithification, the carbonate fragmented as it slid or slumped, along with other sedimentary debris, downslope into deeper waters. This is one of the few reports of an ancient cold-seep chemosynthetic community dominated by tube worms, and the third report of an allochthonous cold-seep carbonate within a deep-water depositional setting.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Paleontology , Volume 74 , Issue 6 , November 2000 , pp. 992 - 999
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society

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Footnotes

3

Mailing address: P.O. Box 153, Wauna, Washington 98395

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