Paper about outcrop example of shelf-edge delta deposits now out in JSR

The July 2009 issue of Journal of Sedimentary Research includes a paper I’m a co-author on about some sedimentological work we did in southern Chile. If you’ve been following this blog you know that we’ve done a lot of work on the deep-marine strata in this area, but overlying the deep-marine succession is a deltaic and shallow-marine formation that, until now, hasn’t been looked at in detail. This paper, which is hopefully the first of a series about this formation, summarizes work we did investigating the stratigraphic evolution of ~300 m (1000 ft) thick interval spanning delta-front to coastal plain depositional environments.

Hopefully I will find some time soon to blog about these rocks in more detail (which I also said about this paper last month) … but, in the meantime here is a photograph of part of the outcrop. The steeper sandstone cliffs near the top of the photo are about 15 m (50 ft) tall to give you a sense of scale.

Cerro Escondido outcrop, southern Chile (c 2009 clastic detritus)

This photograph nicely shows the stacking of different depositional environments all in one view.