Jurassic-Cretaceous Arabian orbital stratigraphy: The AROS-JK chart

Abstract

An orbital-forcing, glacio-eustatic model predicts that the depositional durations of transgressive-regressive sequences manifest a periodic hierarchy. Model fourth-, third-and second-order sequences have discrete depositional periods that range from 405 thousand years (Ky) to 14.58 million years (My) (Figure 1; Matthews and Frohlich, 1998, 2002; Immenhauser and Matthews, 2004; Al-Husseini and Matthews, 2005a). This note is part of the ongoing Arabian Orbital Stratigraphy (AROS) program aimed at correlating the model to the sequence stratigraphy of the Arabian Plate. This note accompanies the enclosed Jurassic-Cretaceous Chart (AROS-JK Chart) and focuses on recently documented and dated Jurassic and Cretaceous Arabian sequences. The framework is based on tuning the LA04 orbital-forcing computation of Laskar et al. (2004) and glacio-eustatic parametric forward modeling (Matthews and Frohlich, 2002, p. 515) by R.K. Matthews. Second-order sequence boundaries are here predicted to have occurred every 14.58 My, starting at either 11.3 ± 0.3 or 16.1 ± 0.3 Ma, depending on the choice among geologically reasonable model parameters. The correlation to Jurassic and Cretaceous regional unconformities-hiatuses, with ages estimated from GTS 2004 (Gradstein et al., 2004), supported a correlation to the 16.1 Ma. second-order model (Figure 2). In this note we position representative second-, third-and possible fourth-order Arabian depositional sequences, maximum flooding surfaces and time-marker units in the model framework (AROS JK-Chart). With the exception of the Arabian Plate maximum flooding surfaces (Sharland et al., 2001) most of these sequences, surfaces and time-marker units are only defined locally to semi-regionally (e.g. outcrop, concession, petroleum field, etc.); their extent (or lack of) across Arabia remains to be evaluated. The bibliographic references used to date and correlate the sequences and time-rock units are listed in descending stratigraphic age below.