Late Mississippian bryozoan/microbial build-ups on a drowned karst terrain: Port au Port Peninsula, western Newfoundland

Bryozoan and microbial carbonate build-ups occur within the Late Mississippian (mid-Viséan) Codroy Group on the Port au Port Peninsula, western Newfoundland. Build-ups formed only adjacent to a rocky, cliffed, shoreline filling narrow submerged palaeovalleys of a well-developed Late Devonian-Early Mississippian karst terrain. The nearshore setting was a stressed environment as indicated by (1) the absence of normal marine biota, such as corals, echinoderms, and calcareous algae, (2) high numbers and low species diversity of dominant taxa (bryozoans, brachiopods, and microbial communities), and (3) abundant plant-bearing siliciclastics deposited by the episodic influx of fresh-water from adjacent uplands. Build-up development was terminated by Meramec time, due to falling sea-level and seaward progradation of terrestrial sediments. Preserved structural and constructional fabrics within the build-ups include (1) thickets of bryozoans and microbial microthrombolites, structurally enhanced by probable marine Mg-calcite and aragonite cements, (2) multigeneration internal sediment, and (3) small colonies of serpulid worms and terebratulid brachiopods. Submarine cementation within the build-ups appears to have been abundant during arrested sedimentation, whereas intermound sediments (carbonates and siliciclastics) were lithified only during burial diagenesis. Shallow-burial fracturing, stylolitization, sulphide and sulphate mineralization, and precipitation of phreatic, iron-poor, calcite cement occurred during burial diagenesis. Codroy build-ups are distinct from the more common Mississippian mud mounds. Their internal characteristics and the geologic setting are more like other Late Palaeozoic and Holocene bryozoan-rich build-ups.     

Mesoproterozoic deep-water reefs from Borden Peninsula, Arctic Canada

A superbly exposed stromatolite reef complex occurs in the Victor Bay Formation near Strathcona River on northern Baffin Island. Individual reefs are up to 130 m thick and nearly 1 km in length, and their development was clearly related to their position in the facies spectrum and to sea-level dynamics. In the first sea-level cycle, metre-scale reefs grew amongst mid-ramp calcarenites and outer-ramp shales during slow sea-level rise; a 25-m-thick oblate reef tract, separating mid-ramp and outer-ramp facies, formed during the highstand. The greatest period of reef growth was during the second sea-level cycle. Pinnacle reefs nucleated on the karsted upper surface of the oblate reef tract and aggraded rapidly in response to rising sea-level, producing structures with more than 75 m of depositional relief. A gradual symmetrical succession of stromatolite growth forms, from stratiform to cylindrical columns to conical columns and then back through cylindrical columns to stratiform, is mirrored by evidence in offreef deposits for deepening to a maximum flooding surface and then shallowing. The tops of these high-standing reefs were karsted during the following regression, while dolomite ‘cryptodomes’ grew as sheets on their submerged flanks and as progradational tongues extending basinward of the reefs. Continued sea-level fall resulted in subaerial exposure of the entire reef complex and the extensive formation of surface and subsurface karst. These Proterozoic slope buildups are similar to Phanerozoic deep-water reefs in size, shape, prevalence of synsedimentary lithification, presence of Neptunian dykes and in their well-developed vertical zonation of reefbuilders. However, they differ in being constructed exclusively by stromatolites rather than being mud mounds with small skeletal elements, and in lacking halos of perireefal sand- and gravel-sized calcareous debris. Their responses to changes in sea-level were strikingly similar to those shown by their younger counterparts, and suggest that sequence-stratigraphic concepts derived from studies of Phanerozoic reefs can also be applied to the Proterozoic.