Jump to content

Possibly bioturbated sandstone?


Clayton Jones

Recommended Posts

I've been adventuring my family property in north-western Pottawatomie county, Oklahoma, for 15 years or so and I've always thought all this sandstone was kinda boring - there didn't seem to be any obvious strata, or differences in composition and no fossils.

On Christmas day, however, I went out on the family property to do a bit of photogrammetry of the sandstone outcrops on the property and I stumbled upon a very interesting pattern in the sandstone:



I have been told that it looks like bioturbated sandstone, and it certainly looks like some kind of biological pattern. This sandstone belongs to the garber formation in central Oklahoma, and is Permian in age. This is the only place I've seen such a pattern anywhere around here.

Is anyone familiar with the garber sandstone or perhaps with similar formations/trace fossils?

 

WhVUieh.png
My attempt at creating a museum and community center to help people find an interest in the world around them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Clayton Jones said:

didn't seem to be any obvious strata

I was surprised to hear that bioturbation is a leading cause of this lack in many situations.

I know nothing about your area though. 

  • I found this Informative 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Rockwood, I can provide scans and photos later of what most of the sandstone looks like in the area. It's all mostly solid and featureless sand that has been poorly-cemented into a very soft stone, worn to a rounded shape out of hillsides and drainage areas.

There is at least one layer of varying thickness on my property that has definite cross bedding in it, a thick layer of red clay about 5 feet below my bioturbated sandstone and an area that has darker sandstone that is much harder than usual above everything else.

@GeschWhat I used Agisoft Photoscan and a Nikon D3100 to take the photos that were used to produce the model. Blender was used to add the scale bar and to finalize the whole model before upload.

WhVUieh.png
My attempt at creating a museum and community center to help people find an interest in the world around them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

44 minutes ago, Clayton Jones said:

I can provide scans and photos later of what most of the sandstone looks like in the area. It's all mostly solid and featureless sand that has been poorly-cemented into a very soft stone, worn to a rounded shape out of hillsides and drainage areas.

Could help someone, but I would be even more over my head than usual trying to interpret it. :wacko:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Rockwood I don't know much more than what little information I can find, it would seem that the garber formation in this area is kinda understudied except maybe as an aquifer.

Any information on the geology of what I'm looking at would be nice.

WhVUieh.png
My attempt at creating a museum and community center to help people find an interest in the world around them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Most work on the Permian of Oklahoma was done in the 1930's(Green,Patterson,Foley,Dott,all in the AAPG Bulletin))

below:Garber barite concretions

qugdelptttympwillist.jpg

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Clayton Jones said:

Any information on the geology of what I'm looking at would be nice.

Sea levels were exceptionally low during much of the Permian. It seems possible that you have a biologically active marine environment that was left high and dry. Absent a mechanism for rapid deposition of sediments, body fossils may not have formed. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm not sure about the sandstone in the 3D graphic, but the sandstone in the link surely does look like filled burrows.

 

As for the geology, it is possible the Garber and adjacent strata could be part of a clastic wedge from the Quachita highlands... or at least that's been my understanding of the Pennsylvanian-Permian geology of Oklahoma as it relates to that of Kansas. This diagram illustrates this on a very basic level:

 

fig4.gif.1497e3c7206c31307ccf40f293ad95d5.gif

 

( http://www.kgs.ku.edu/Publications/Bulletins/217/02_intro.html )

 

It is possible there were some marine incursions into your area that would support bioturbating critters.

  • I found this Informative 3

Context is critical.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Missourian Thank you for the information, I haven't seen that particular map in my searches. 

@Rockwood The layer this bioturbation comes from has no cross-bedding and is only slightly fissile, whereas most rocks in the area don't really want to split into any layers of any size. There is a layer present on the property, several feet below the bioturbation, that shows some good cross-bedding and it seems to range from around four inches in the area of the bioturbation to maybe six feet or more further east on the property - I have yet to confirm that these two layers of cross-bedding are the same layer though.

WhVUieh.png
My attempt at creating a museum and community center to help people find an interest in the world around them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Clayton Jones said:

The layer this bioturbation comes from has no cross-bedding and is only slightly fissile, whereas most rocks in the area don't really want to split into any layers of any size. There is a layer present on the property, several feet below the bioturbation, that shows some good cross-bedding and it seems to range from around four inches in the area of the bioturbation to maybe six feet or more further east on the property - I have yet to confirm that these two layers of cross-bedding are the same layer though.

Cross-bedded sandstone is often the result of dune activity. This was apparently a dynamic area during a dynamic time. Too much of a moving target for me.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Rockwood only a single layer appears to have cross-bedding, all the other sandstone seems to be fairly homogeneous and feature free.

WhVUieh.png
My attempt at creating a museum and community center to help people find an interest in the world around them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 hours ago, Clayton Jones said:

@Rockwood only a single layer appears to have cross-bedding, all the other sandstone seems to be fairly homogeneous and feature free.

Cross-bedding can also be formed in rivers. Conceivably even by a storm in a desert. 

This sort of problem is a bit like a rubric's cube. There are many solutions that almost fit, but it takes a lot of work to make all the pieces fit right.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...

It's been a while, but here is a better view of these patterns from a sample I've collected. The patterns aren't very easy to distinguish color or texture-wise, but they are fairly evident when the light hits the surface just right.

 

bioturbation whitebox 01b.jpg

WhVUieh.png
My attempt at creating a museum and community center to help people find an interest in the world around them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

they look like trace fossils to me. Perhaps arthrophycus/paleophycus but I'm way off your location so take that with a grain of salt.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Clayton. I've found very similar fossils to your image at a few locations nearby. I believe they are the trace fossils of microbial mats. The fossils I've found date to the Cambrian/Ordovician. Looking for examples of microbial mats I came across this image, which according to the website is also from Oklahoma. Website labels the fossil as coming from the Hartshorne Sandstone formation and says it is created from "MISS" (Microbially Induced Sedimentary Structures).

 

stromatolite-microbial-mat.jpg

'https://www.fossilera.com/fossils/4-5-fossil-stromatolite-microbial-mat-oklahoma'

 

This recent post of mine contains images of smaller, weathered sections of similar microbial mats to your image.

 

 

Edited by JesseKoz
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Plax arthrophycus does indeed seem to resemble the patterns in my sandstone very well, being a branched 'tubular' pattern. I will be 3D scanning the specimens I've collected for a better comparison.

@JesseKoz the patterns in my sandstone are more regular in diameter than those in the microbial mat fossils, the patterns don't seem to be very similar.

The sandstone my fossils come out of are Permian red beds, specifically the garber formation. I don't know how common microbial mat trace fossils are in this formation, fossils in general are pretty rare here in this sandstone.

WhVUieh.png
My attempt at creating a museum and community center to help people find an interest in the world around them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...

@Clayton Jones I've seen those same tubular types of patterns in the ferrous chunks that precipitate out of the Garber.  Around here (SE OKC) they catch my attention due to their resemblance to meteorites.  A friend passed one of my specimens along to a geologist at Sam Noble who indicated it was a ferrous oxide precipitate, possibly hematite or goethite, due to iron and silica precipitating out over time and oxidizing.  I also have a few specimens which are inversions of your specimen.  The tubes are carved out of the rock and some of the local minima in these tube structures still contain whitish minerals from the water which must have shaped them.  My amateur guess that, despite its appearance, your specimen is non-biological.  Possibly goethite involved?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I also usually find a significant number of spherical-shaped "blueberries" in these same areas, also a clue about water being involved.  Just my guess tho!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...