Beatriz Carenas

The Upper Cretaceous in the Tagus Basin (Central Spain): sequential analysis based on oil-well data and outcrop correlation

Abstract The logs from six oil wells drilled between 1960 and 1980 in the Upper Cretaceous succession of the Tagus Basin were analysed and correlated with surface outcrops, to estimate sedimentary environments and to detect cyclicity in sedimentation. Log interpretation has been carefully checked with outcrop data, because high peaks in gamma-ray logs, usually considered to represent open marine facies, may correspond either to open marine or to muddy coastal deposits. The former correspond to the maximum flooding surfaces of depositional sequences, whereas the latter correspond to sequence boundaries. Three second-order depositional megasequences have been recognized (MS-2, MS-3 and MS-4). The basal megasequence onlaps older rocks, grading upwards from continental to marine deposits. The megasequence MS-3 shows a basal marly transgressive interval and a thick carbonate pile at the top, grading to the SE to sabkha environments. The top megasequence is hardly recognized in surface outcrops, but in well logs it is a thick evaporite — claystone unit of mainly sabkha environments that grade westwards to coastal deposits. Sedimentation of megasequences MS-3 and MS-4 extended farther west than previously considered, covering areas considered as part of the exposed Hesperian Massif. These were areas of marine and coastal sedimentation where organic matter accumulation could be potentially high, and can be considered potential areas for oil or gas exploration.

Depositional architecture and peculiar sedimentary features of late Cretaceous Utrillas Formation at Tamajón (Guadalajara, Spain)

The Utrillas Formation represents clastic wedges that accumulated in relation to continental-coastal areas of Iberian Basin during the worldwide late Cretaceous sea-level rise. At the Tamajon outcrop the late Cenomanian Utrillas wedges are composed of four facies associations (FA1 to FA4), which unconformable overlay Triassic deposits. Basal sediments (FA1) are interpreted as high energy, braided fluvial deposits, characterized by coarse-grained (conglomerate–sandstone) facies; which grade upwards to tide-influenced, estuarine sedimentation (sandstones and mudstones with inclined heterolithic stratification, FA2), and then to high-energy, coastal sheet and channelled sandstones with different tidal features (FA3); and finally, to fine-grained (mudstones and minor burrowed sandstones) of an offshore marine associations (FA4). The depositional architecture based in the presence and hierarchy of several ranks of bounding surfaces and the overall upward-fining succession show the long term retrogradational trend of these facies associations. Peculiar sedimentary features of these sediments are 1) the presence of large-scale, single sets of cross beds infilling large erosive channels, which are tidal (not aeolian) in origin. 2) The size and length of the cross-bedding defined by couplets of different grain size; here interpreted as originated by flow unsteadiness in relation to changing tides. And 3) an unusual association of ironstones, wrinkle structures and vertebrate tracks with microbial mats and penecontemporaneous iron encrusting allowing track preservation in the sedimentary record.