Page 88 - Carbonate Platforms Facies, Sequences, and Evolution

it
80
the
Basin
within
In the
islands.
from
deposits
Triassic
was
the
the
hypothetical
Muschelkalk,
stratigraphies.
basin
divided
northeaste\n
Girona
of all three
Upper
with
Pyrenean
into
sedimentation
High.
Iberian
in
of siliciclastic input (Busson,
Soria-Montalban-Orpesa
At
different
F.
Muschelkalk
transgressive
rift-wrench
High
'sub-basins'
times,
western
Cal
and
Peninsula,
(Fig.
the
and
thicknesses
system,
1982; Ziegler,
through
is
vet, M. E.
syn­
periods are de-
Imon For­
1). The
The Catalan Basin opened towards
Fig. 1. Triassic basins of the Iberian Peninsula and France.
northern boundary of the Catalan Basin, separating
Catalan
the southeast into the Tethys sea. There may well
The cyclicity is expressed through an alternation of
episodes and mostly consist of carbonate ramp facies.
the
In the Catalan Basin and eastern Valencia Basin,
have been a basement high along the southeast side
'transgressive', dominantly carbonate sequences and
'regressive' siliciclastic and/or evaporite sequences.
three tectono-sedimentary domains are recognized
1982).
ages respectively, represent the major transgressive
mation, of Anisian, Ladinian and probably Norian
sedimentary faulting and differential subsidence, and
changes in sea-level, rates of subsidence and/or rates
central
the Lower
Europe is broadly cyclic, and this has been related to
of the basin, in the region of the present-day Balearic
and/or
In
the
and
Haq
third-
of the
1987).
the
Range,
Middle
et
Gandin
veloped.
Pyrenees
mountain
In
and
et
(Ladinian)
dominated
form
stratigraphy
faults which
et al., 1985).
regional
Muschelkalk
This paper:
crustal
the
a
al.,
Basin,
Triassic
and
in the
chains.
Tucker and J. M. Henton
al. (1987);
dominated
However,
northeastern
Triassic
1982;
Meseta
m
by
and
(Anisian)
third-order cycles of the
part
extensional
NW-SE basement faults,
Catalan
Europe during the Triassic.
(4)
by longitudinal,
carbonate
Between
Virgili
fourth/fifth-order
and
right-stepping,
major
GEOLOGICAL
STRATIGRAPHICAL
et
global
of the
highlands
and systems tracts philosophies,
the
sedimentology
Basin;
ramp
sedimentary
trend from NE-SW
en
cycles
the Iberian
of
al.,
Upper
discusses
to
of
(2)
AND
in
which
NE-SW
Iberian
near-vertical
cycles
to the west and north,
Catalan
1983;
Range
the
the
systems
and the Iberian
central
echelon
SETTING
have
in
with
only
sea-level curve
the origin
developed from the study of seismic reflection pro­
Linking Zone where the dominant structural direc­
Virgili,
the
(Virgili et al., 1977; Garrido-Megias & Villena, 1977;
the
deposits of the last two transgressions are present
tion is E- W (Guimera, 1984, 1988a, 1988b; Anadon
and in
dominated by NW-SE basement faults, there is the
Range,
The structure of the Coastal Range (Figs 2 & 3) is
of
and/or eustatic sea-level rises in western and central
the
and regional subsidence
in an onlapping arrangement of the carbonate facies
of
(Marzo & Calvet, 1985). This is basically a reflection
been
Muschelkalk
Catalan Basin in terms of the depositional sequences
Lower
al., 1987; papers in Wilgus et al., 1988); (3) compares
files (Hubbard et al., 1985; Haq et al., 1987; Vail et
(1) presents a general outline of the
the transgression increased successively and resulted
there are three mountain chains: the Pyrenees, the
analyses the
Peninsula
Iberian Range and the Catalan Coastal Range. The
basement
Alpine orogeny as the foreland basin of the three
Ebro Basin, Tertiary in age, was formed during the
only the deposits of the last transgression (Imon) are
present. On a broad scale, therefore, the extent of
Middle
Triassic in terms of tectonic and eustatic mechanisms.
Spain,
Coastal
faults, and the Iberian Range, dominated by major
basement
array
ENE-WSW