Washover fan and brackish bay sedimentation in the Berriasian-Valanginian of Bornholm, Denmark

ABSTRACT
The Robbedale and Jydegård Formations (Berriasian-Valanginian) of the Danish island of Bornholm represent a 100 m thick vertical sequence from shoreface, foreshore and beach sands of a high-energy coast through backbarrier flat, bay margin pond and distal washover fan sand and clay, brackish bay clay, to fluvial sands. The longevity of the backbarrier-bay system (c. 10 Myr), thickness (100 m) of the bay deposits and apparently stacked nature of the facies belts suggest a relatively stationary position of the individual subenvironments, with only minor progradation. This reflects strong tectonic control of the depositional system during an important phase of synsedimentary block faulting and wrenching along the Tornquist Zone. The importance of washover fan sands in the backbarrier deposits, and the lack of tidal indications in the whole sequence, suggest a microtidal regime. A system of migrating mud banks formed in shallow water on the landward side of the barrier. The bay waters varied from almost fresh to brackish, and anoxic conditions commonly occurred at the bottom. Adverse living conditions for most organisms in the bay caused seasonal, possibly toxic, dinoflagellate blooms resulting in mass mortality of infaunal bivalves. Bay-margin ponds underwent periodic desiccation, leading to mass mortality of freshwater gastropods. As a general scenario it is envisaged that longshore currents redistributed bedload from a major delta and formed an extensive NW-SE barrier-spit which partly enclosed a major bay to the NE. The barrier was breached during heavy storms and the sand transported along the resulting washover channels was deposited on the backbarrier flat made up of the subaerial parts of coalescent washover fans. Enormous amounts of suspension load from the delta travelled further along the barrier to be deposited in the lee-side bay.