Co-authored paper out in Journal of Sedimentary Research

A paper on which I am second author is now out in the May 2009 issue of Journal of Sedimentary Research (you can find it here or here).

The paper summarizes a study of ancient submarine mass-wasting deposits and how their stratigraphic architecture influenced overlying sand-rich turbidite deposits.

The rocks are part of an Upper Cretaceous succession exposed in the mountains of the Patagonian Andes in southern Chile that I’ve posted about numerous times (see all posts tagged with ‘Patagonia’ here). The first author was a fellow student who also did part of his graduate research on these strata.

I will post about the paper in more detail when I can find some time … but in the meantime, here is a photograph of the outcrops (which isn’t in the paper) to whet your appetite. Click on it to see a slightly bigger version.

As you can see, the quality of the exposure is exceptional — it is quite rare to get such clean exposures over hundreds of meters of stratigraphic thickness.

The Sierra Contreras, Tres Pasos Formation, southern Chile (© 2009 clasticdetritus.com)

To give you a sense of scale — the uppermost sandstone package is approximately 25 m (80 ft) thick.