The Recycled Orogenic Sand Provenance from an Uplifted Thrust Belt, Betic Cordillera, Southern Spain

Abstract

The Betic Cordillera of southern Spain represents an uplifted foreland fold-thrust belt. Source rock types of the Betic Cordillera include metamorphic (mainly phyllite, schist, quartzite, and gneiss), sedimentary (siliciclastic and carbonate), volcanic (felsic to intermediate pyroclasts), and mantle-derived (peridotite, gabbro, serpentinite, and serpentine schist) rocks. The fluvial systems range that transect the Betic Cordillera are the major detrital source of sediment along the southern Spanish coast, supplying sand to beaches and offshore depositional systems in the Alboran Sea basin.Three key sand petrofacies derived from the Betic mountain belt reflect the main clastic contribution of known source rocks. All the sands are quartzolithic, ranging from quartz-rich to lithic-rich.Fluvial systems draining the Sierra de Los Filabres, the Sierra Nevada, the Sierra de Gador, and the Málaga Mountains, and their related beaches constitute a metamorphic-sedimenticlastic quartzolithic sand petrofacies (Qm34؎10

Tectonics and sedimentation of the Lower and Middle Pleistocene mixed siliciclastic/bioclastic sedimentary successions of the Ionian Peloritani Mts (NE Sicily, Southern Italy): the onset of opening of the Messina Strait

“…This evidence suggest incipient uplift and erosion of the marginal areas during the initial stage of the Middle Pleistocene transgression e.g. : [89]. Stratal unit d of cycle R3 represents an open-marine depositional setting (inferred paleo-depth interval: 300 to 500 m), in which gravitational events (rock falls and de-bris flows) tend to affect the deepest environment.…”

“…The recycled sediments were transported towards the subsiding NE sector to form part of the younger depositional cycle R3 (Figure 14D) e.g. [89,121]. The R2-R3 diachronism and the episodes of sediment recycling indicate the activity of a transfer fault system of local significance (as hypothesized in Figure 14B), whose existence is suggested by two main geological evidences: i) the main normal faults bounding the inner margin of the sedimentary succession are connected by transverse strike-slip minor faults, perpendicular to the shoreline, which do not propagate across the western crystalline basement ( Figure 1); ii) especially for the SW sector, the pre-Pleistocene substrate is dissected by a number of shore-parallel normal faults which produce a series of tilted landward-dipping blocks.…”

Glass Making in the Greco-Roman World: Results of the ARCHGLASS project

“…Detrital matter undergoes very limited compositional change during transport in such river systems and as a result, the composition of the beach deposits is generally a very good reflection of the dominant rock types in the hinterland (Cavazza et al, 1993;Critelli et al, 1997, Garzanti et al, 2002. Critelli et al (2003) investigated the composition of sand deposits from fluvial and beach environments along the Atlantic and Mediterranean sides of the Betic Cordillera in southern Spain. They were able to define three distinctive sand petrofacies corresponding to the major geological source areas.…”

Petrography of Middle Jurassic to Early Cretaceous sandstones in the Kutch Basin, western India: Implications on provenance and basin evolution

“…Composition of major and accessory heavy minerals in sandstones provide crucial information regarding the provenance of sedimentary basins (Armstrong-Altrin et al 2012Arribas et al 2000;Caracciolo et al 2012;Critelli and Ingersoll 1994;Critelli and Le Pera 1994;Critelli et al 2003;Le Pera and Critelli 1997;Paikaray et al 2008;Saha et al 2010). Petrographic investigation of sandstone is widely used to infer tectonic setting, source rock composition, transportation and environment of deposition (Dickinson 1970(Dickinson , 1985Dickinson and Suczek 1979;Dickinson et al 1983;Ingersoll and Suczek 1979;Le Pera and Arribas 2004;Le Pera et al 2001;Zuffa 1985Zuffa , 1987.…”