Petrographie und Diagenese des Stubensandsteines (mittlerer Keuper) aus Tiefbohrungen im Raum Memmingen (Bayern)

The “Stubensandstein” (Middle Keuper) of the Memmingen region (Southern Germany) — the detrital deposit of a nearby granitic red-soil area — was investigated sedimentologically, on the basis of three cores from 2,230, 1,930 and 1,420 metres depth. Shale- and marl-layers are intercalated in beds of coarse grained, immature sandstone. The rare carbonate is predominantly early diagenetic dolomite. The most exceptional result of the diagenesis is the formation of a variously composed claymineral association in the porous sandstones: Kaolinite, sudoite, sudoite/montmorillonitemixed-layers and tosudite (a regular 1∶1 sudoite/montm.-mixed-layer). The detrital component of the clay-minerals (illite and illite/montm.-mixed-layers) is preserved more or less unchanged in the shales, marls and argillaceous sandstones. Two main diagenetic phases can be distinguished:

1. The early diagenetic formation of kaolinite out of the solution-products of feldspars in acid environment. Quartz is precipitated in microcrystalline form in the pore space, garnet is partly dissolved.
2. In the course of the Neogen deep burial stage kaolinite becomes unstable and sudoite and sudoite/montm. are newformed; the intensity of this phenomenon depends on depth of burial and rock-permeability. Calcite sporadically crystallizes out of an environment that has become alkaline; adjacent feldspar becomes more or less dissolved and is pseudomorphically replaced by calcite. Al(OH)₃ is thereby released and is fixed in montmorillonite, thus forming the sudoite of the carbonatic horizons, which never contain kaolinite.