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High-Resolution Allostratigraphy And Sedimentology Of Santonian - Early Campanian Wapiabi Formation In Southern Alberta, Western Canada Foreland Basin, El Mahadia I. Mohammed

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Within a 90,000 km2 study area in SW Alberta, Santonian – basal Campanian strata of the upper Wapiabi Formation are dominated by marine rocks that thin westward from ~300 ~180 m over ~300 km, reflecting apparently spatially uniform flexural subsidence driven by the static load of the orogen. A high-resolution allostratigraphic framework established ten allomembers grouped in four informal tectono-stratigraphic ‘units’, three of which were previously recognized in NW Alberta. In the north and east, the formation is dominated by mudstone organized in numerous metre-scale siltier- and sandier-upward parasequences. A lack of clinoforms and abundant wave-formed sedimentary structures suggest that …