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Phosphatic Carbonate Shale of the “Bird’s Nest Saline Zone”, Upper Green River Formation, Uinta Basin, Utah

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Stratigraphy and Paleolimnology of the Green River Formation, Western USA

Part of the book series: Syntheses in Limnogeology ((SYNLIMNO,volume 1))

Abstract

In aqueous depositional systems, phosphorus (P) is highly mobile and is readily reworked back into the water column after initial sedimentation. As a result, during deposition of most lacustrine sedimentary successions, gross P sedimentation typically is not much greater than gross P release, leading to low net P abundance. Such low abundances predominate in a 200 m-thick lacustrine succession of variably shaley, evaporitic, and organic-rich carbonate mudstone from the upper member of the Green River Formation in the Uinta Basin of Utah. However, the succession also includes thin but highly enriched phosphatic horizons that represent marked aberrations in the prevailing depositional and immediate subsurface diagenetic environment. This contribution details one carbonate shale bed, containing calcite pseudomorphs, that is equated with the nahcolite-bearing “bird’s-nest saline zone” of the upper Green River Formation. X-ray diffraction analyses and scanning electron microscopy record the P-enrichment as interstitial microcrystalline aggregates of calcium fluorapatite. The calcium fluorapatite also partly replaces precursor grains, forms a grain coating around some silicate grains and occurs alongside abundant displacive and pseudomorphing crystals of calcite, and rhombic dolomite.

At high pH, which would have promoted nahcolite precipitation in the deeper part of the lake, the presence of dissolved Mg2+ would have kinetically inhibited calcium fluorapatite precipitation even if P was at saturation. But, during evaporitic pumping adjacent to a sabkha environment, and possibly mediated by methanogenic bacteria, the formation of ferroan dolomite, and smectite, Mg2+ was removed from porewaters allowing calcium fluorapatite to crystallize.

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Acknowledgments

Manuscript reviewers and editors provided detailed and constructive comments. D. MacIsaac assisted with logging and sampling. V. Reddy (UNB Earth Sciences) undertook the XRD analyses. Sample chips and thin sections were produced by A. Murphy and C. Nash (UNB Earth Sciences). SEM analysis was courtesy of S. Boonsue and J. Spray (UNB Earth Sciences). Field and stratigraphic discussions with M. Vanden Berg, D. Sprinkel and C. Morgan (Utah Geological Survey) were very constructive. Funding for this project was provided in part by an NSERC Discovery Grant and by a Utah Geological Survey, State of Utah Petroleum Research Grant.

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  1. Department of Earth Sciences, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, E3B 5A3, Canada

    Dave Keighley

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  1. School of Earth Science and Environmental Sustainablity, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona, USA

    Michael Elliot Smith

  2. Department of Geoscience, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, USA

    Alan R. Carroll

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Keighley, D. (2015). Phosphatic Carbonate Shale of the “Bird’s Nest Saline Zone”, Upper Green River Formation, Uinta Basin, Utah. In: Smith, M., Carroll, A. (eds) Stratigraphy and Paleolimnology of the Green River Formation, Western USA. Syntheses in Limnogeology, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9906-5_10

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