ALBERT

Notes: The deep-tow instrument package of Scripps Institution of Oceanography provides a unique opportunity to delineate small-scale features of a size comparable to those features usually described from ancient deep-sea fan deposits. On Navy Fan, the deep-tow side-scanning sonar readily detected steep channel walls and steps and terraces within channels. The most striking features observed in side-scan are large crescentic depressions commonly occurring in groups. These appear to be large scours or flutes carved by turbidity currents. Four distinct acoustic facies were mapped on the basis of qualitative assessment of reflectivity of 4 kHz reflection profiles. There is a distinct increase in depth of acoustic penetration, number of sub-bottom reflectors, and reflector continuity from the upper fan-valley to the lower fan. These changes are accompanied by a decrease in surface relief.Navy Fan is made up of three active sectors. The active upper fan is dominated by a single channel with prominent levees that decrease in height downstream. The active mid-fan region or suprafan is where sand is deposited. Well defined distributary channels with steps, terraces, and other mesotopography terminate in depositional lobes. Interchannel areas are rough, containing giant scours as well as other relief. The active lower fan accumulates mud and silt and is without resolvable surface morphology.The morphological features seen on Navy Fan other than levees, interchannel areas, and lobes are principally erosional. The distributary channels are up to 0.5 km wide and 5–15 m deep. Such features, because of their large size and low relief, are rarely completely exposed or easily detectable in ancient rock sequences. Some flute-shaped scours are larger than channels in cross section but many are 5-30 m across and 1-2 m deep. If observed in ancient rocks transverse to palaeo-current direction, they would perhaps be indistinguishable from channels. Surface sediment distribution combined with fan morphology can be used to relate modern sediments to facies models for ancient fan sediments. Gravel and sand occur in the upper valley, massive sand beds in the mid-fan distributary channels, classical complete Bouma sequences on depositional lobes, incomplete Bouma sequences (lacking division a) on the lower mid-fan, and Bouma sequence with lenticular shape or other limited extent on mid-fan interchannel areas and on levees.

Notes: Microcrystalline dolomite and related carbonate minerals have been forming throughout the Quaternary in shallow ephemeral alkaline lakes on the coastal plain of the Coorong area in southern Australia. These Coorong dolomites differ significantly from sabkha-type dolomites. They form in areas where evaporation rates during summer months exceed groundwater inflow rates to a series of alkaline lakes. This results in the lakes becoming desiccated during summer months. Brines resulting from this drying phase are then refluxed out of the system into seaward-flowing groundwaters of an unconfined coastal aquifer. Dolomites and other fine-grained carbonates remain behind, whilst saline and sulphate evaporite minerals are flushed out of the system. Progressive restriction by sedimentation in and around the Holocene coastal dolomite lakes results in an upward-shoaling sedimentary cycle. Basal sediments which formed in a restricted marine environment pass upwards to lacustrine dolomites or magnesites exhibiting desiccation and groundwater resurgence structures such as mudcracks and teepees. The upper Proterozoic Skillogallee Dolomite Formation, an early rift basin unit of the Adelaide Supergroup, contains dolomites which show many of the features characteristic of the peculiar groundwater hydrology which plays an important role in Coorong dolomite genesis. These features include aphanitic dolomites which lack relict saline or sulphate evaporite minerals. The Skillogallee Dolomite Formation in some areas overlies an earlier dolomitic unit, informally named the Callanna Beds, typified by abundant pseudomorphs after sulphate minerals. Sabkha style dolomites characterizing the Callanna Beds are replaced up-section by the Coorong-type dolomite of the Skillogallee Dolomite Formation. This implies the development of an increasingly more active groundwater regime. The ultimate source and mode of concentration of the necessary Mg required to form both the modern and ancient dolomites remain imperfectly understood.

Notes: Soft-sediment deformation features occur commonly on parts of intertidal sand bodies in Cobequid Bay, Bay of Fundy. These features are small- to intermediate-sized, slump-like bodies, 1-3 m2 in area and located on the crest and upper stoss side of ebb megaripples. External modification of these slumps indicates that they formed before complete emergence. The deformed cross-bedding within these bodies extends to a depth of 0.15-0.35 m and shows that deformation occurred during slumping and flowage of liquefied sand down the megaripple stoss side. Field evidence and calculations strongly indicate that this liquefaction results from the impact of 0.1-0.3 m high waves breaking against the megaripple lee faces. Neither rapid drawdown of the water level nor earthquake shocks are reasonable alternative explanations.Indigenous wave activity provides an attractive substitute to tectonism as an explanation of soft-sediment deformation in ancient shallow-water sediments. Slow wave-induced compaction may also account for the relative scarcity of deformation structures in shallow marine sandstones.

Notes: An extensive sequence of small patch-reefs occurs within the middle member of the Upper Coralline Limestone Formation (Upper Miocene) in western Malta. In the lower horizons of the Tal Pitkal Member these structures are lensoidal in cross section and are surrounded by coarse flanking biosparites. Towards the top of the member they become more irregular in form. Extensive biostrome developments occur in association with the later structures but unlike the patch-reefs they were killed off periodically by episodes of exposure.The resistance of these structures to wave action is verified by the presence of extensive mollusc borings both in patch-reefs and biostromes. The initial binders within both structures are considered to be stromatolitic algae. Early diagenetic rims were also precipitated around allochems and added further strength to the frame work. Within this framework pelleted micrites accumulated which contrast strongly with the sparite cements of the flanking sediments.The organic framebuilders were finally killed off by a particularly strong episode of submarine erosion, with the subsequent establishment of an oolite shoal over the entire region.

Notes: Aragonite and calcite needles, 30–500 μm long, were found to be prominent visual components throughout the water column in some areas of the New England (northeastern U.S.A.) continental shelf during winter months. Further investigation showed these‘needles’to be laths derived from the degradation of mollusc shells which were resuspended from bottom sediments during winter storms. Such degradation and subsequent transport/dissolution of carbonate particles may help explain why the terrigenous 'starved’shelf sediments off New England contain such small amounts of calcium carbonate.

Notes: The marginal carbonate facies of the Miocene Ries meteorite crater lake in southern Germany contain bioherms up to 7 m high and 15 m across built by the green alga Cladophorites. The algae were externally encrusted during life by micrite, probably precipitated in response to photosynthetic uptake of CO2, which produced tufts of fine (100 μm diameter), calcareous tubes. Coalescence of tufts, together with incorporation of peloidal and skeletal sand, created nodules and cones of algal tufa which in turn formed larger masses some of which are in the form of compound cones up to 2 m high. The bioherms are constructed by beds and groups of these cones and masses, and are surrounded by poorly cemented peloid, ostracod and gastropod sands. Five depositional and diagenetic stages of development can be distinguished: (1) growth and calcification (probably calcitic) of Cladophorites in shallow fresh- or slightly brackish water; (2) emergence due to a temporary fall in lake level and veneering of the algal tufa and adjacent sediments by laminated sinter; (3) resubmergence and deposition of peloidal and skeletal sands; (4) burial and partial phreatic dolomitization, together with dissolution of aragonite and penecontemporaneous deposition of thin isopachous rims of dolomite rhombs; (5) local vadose cementation by rhombs, spar and spikes of low-magnesian calcite. Stages 1–3 probably occurred several times. Most of the biohermal and surrounding sediments were produced by biological processes in the lake; subaerial sinter deposition and meteoric cementation have contributed relatively minor amounts of material and the majority of the sediments retain porosities of 10–30%.

Notes: Forty beds of authigenic carbonate were identified from the deep Bering Sea in cores taken on Leg 19 of the Deep Sea Drilling Project. Carbonate minerals were mainly high-magnesium calcite and protodolomite, less commonly siderite, rhodo-chrosite, low-magnesium calcite, and manganosiderite. Authigenic carbonates cement and replace diatom ooze, ash and bentonite beds, and, less commonly, clastic beds. Replacement zones are as much as 60 cm thick. Eighty-five per cent of carbonate beds occurred below 400 m sub-bottom depth and 70% in sediment older than 4 m.y. δ13C values averaged -17.200/00 PDB and δ18O ranged from 18.59 to 34–110/00SMOW. The carbon was derived from oxidation of organic matter under anaerobic conditions during bacterial reduction of sulphate, or from CO2 produced in concert with CH4 during degradation of organic matter. The cations (Ca, Mg, Fe, Mn) were derived from alteration of ash beds. In Bering Sea deposits, ash beds altered to smectite within about 3–5 m.y. Carbonate precipitated simultaneously at different stratigraphic levels within the 627–1057 m sections at temperatures of 7–85°C. No apparent calcite precursor of biogenic origin was found for these authigenic carbonates.

Notes: Euhedral, tetragonal, dipyramidal crystals of weddellite, an authigenic calcium oxalate, occur in samples from the topmost core of Deep Sea Drilling Project Site 210 in the Coral Sea Basin. Opinions in the literature differ as to whether weddellite is formed in situ or during sample storage. Comparison of smear-slides made of samples after a 4 year storage period with shipboard smear-slides made immediately after core retrieval, indicates that weddellite was formed in situ. Possible further growth during storage is not obvious. The presence of many corroded crystals, and the absence of weddellite in deeper cores, suggest that weddellite is formed soon after deposition, but dissolves again in time and with increased burial, due to changing geochemical parameters.