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Lower and middle Ordovician of the St. Lawrence lowlands stratigraphy and historical geology

University of British Columbia

The purpose of this paper is to give a brief description of the stratigraphy of the Lower and Middle Ordovician formations of the St. Lawrence Lowlands together with a short summary of the historical geology of the time. The basis for the paper is the literature on the subject, as the author's personal investigation has been restricted to one summer's work in a small section of the Lowlands. For the purpose of this description, the limits of the area are first defined and the region is then subdivided into three parts. There follows a description of the Beekmantown formation in which the problem of the Potsdam and Nepean sandstones is discussed. Afterwards, the historical geology of the epoch is given in resume. The Chazy formations are in turn examined, and the historical geology of the period is supplied. The more complex problem of the Black River, Trenton, and Utica stratigraphy is then analyzed. Changes in facies and thicknesses of contemporaneous formations in different parts of the Lowlands are studied with particular reference to the work of Raymond, Kay, Okulitch, Clark, and Wilson. An attempt to correlate these formations is made, but, owing to the complexity of the problem and the small amount of information available on many areas, the picture is left incomplete. The historical geology of this third marine invasion covering the St. Lawrence Lowlands from Black River to Utica time, is reviewed. The bibliography does not pretend to be exhaustive. It contains works on the stratigraphy of the Lower and Middle Ordovician Period and some works dealing with the palaeontology have also been included as a useful complement to the stratigraphy.

Text

2012-02-28

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/41007

Geological Sciences

University of British Columbia

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