Arabian Orbital Sequences

Al-Husseini, Moujahed

Abstract

The orbital scale of glacio-eustasy adopts stratons as the fundamental time-rock units of sequence stratigraphy, numbers them as consecutive integers and approximates their duration as 405 kyr (Matthews and Al-Husseini, 2010). It predicts 12 stratons form periodic dozons (4.86 myr) and 3 dozons an orbiton (14.58 myr), and introduces a concise alphanumeric code for naming them. Importantly the scale predicts the ages of major and minor sequence boundaries (SB), lowstands and flooding intervals (MFI) within these long-period sequences using arithmetical formulas. The scale is based on a simplified model of orbital-forcing of glacio-eustasy (Matthews and Frohlich, 2002), which was calibrated with Arabian transgressive-regressive (T-R) sequences (Al-Husseini, 2015, and references therein). The calibration indicated Orbiton 1 was deposited between SB 1 at 16.166 Ma and SB 0 at 1.586 Ma, and SB 37 predicted at 541.046 Ma (1.586 + 37 × 14.58), correlates to the Precambrian/Cambrian Boundary. In many Phanerozoic intervals dozon- and orbiton-scale SBs correlate closely to age estimates of the maximum values in major global positive δ13C excursions, and negative δ13C cycles resemble predicted T-R sequences. In this chapter examples of Early Paleozoic, Early Triassic, Late Cretaceous and Miocene Arabian sequences are compared to global δ13C patterns and both data sets are interpreted as glacio-eustatic proxies and dated with the orbital scale.

Citation

Al-Husseini, M. (2018). Arabian Orbital Sequences. In M. Montenari (Ed.), Stratigraphy & Timescales (219-264). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.sats.2018.08.001

• Online Publication Date: Sep 1, 2018
• Publication Date: 2018
• Deposit Date: Jun 5, 2023
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Pages: 219-264
• Series Title: Cyclostratigraphy and Astrochronology
• Series ISSN: 2468-5178
• Book Title: Stratigraphy & Timescales
• Chapter Number: 5
• ISBN: 978-0-12-815098-6
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.sats.2018.08.001