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Sedimentologic And Stratigraphic Analysis Of Synrift Siliciclastic Fluvial And Lacustrine Strata In The Lower Cretaceous Upper Yucca Formation, Indio Mountains, West Texas, Matthew Robert Fox

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Outcrops of the upper Yucca Formation in the Indio Mountains near Van Horn, Texas provide temporal, tectonic, and climatic similarities to Lower Cretaceous, synrift, greenhouse pre-salt lacustrine strata along in the subsurface of the South Atlantic margin. These "pre-salt" strata hold prolific petroleum reservoirs but despite extensive seismic studies performed for regional scale hydrocarbon exploration in these lacustrine reservoirs, sedimentologic and stratigraphic analyses have rarely been published. The Upper Yucca Formation in the Indio Mountains contain lacustrine reservoir analogs that intertongue with fluvial and deltaic sandstones. Near Squaw Canyon, fluvial-deltaic sandstones are reduced in abundance to lacustrine carbonates by nearly …