There is a possibility that iron ooid formation was promoted by precipitation of iron and silica from volcanic fluids rising up through the substrate, as has been reported from modern marine sediments offshore Indonesia. This hypothesis has emerged with the publication of age data for the volcanic rocks in Skåne, which now appear to be comparable in age to the prominent iron ooid-bearing deposits, i.e. the Rydebäck Member and the Röddinge Formation.
|
|
There are several factors that affect ooid growth: supersaturation of the water with respect to calcium carbonate, the availability of nuclei, agitation of the ooids, water depth, and the role of microbes.
|
|
They host flat-pebble conglomerates, which are characterized by a high ooid content. These ooid bearing flat-pebble conglomerates support the facies concept of shallow, wave dominated water in the vicinity of the bioherms: Ooids form in very shallow, fairly agitated, carbonate saturated water probably under warm climate. The flat pebbles derived from desiccated layers of unlithified cohesive fine clastics that had been reworked, preferentially under the influence of storm waves. Tidal flats or lagoons provide the conditions for the generation of both, ooids and flat- pebble conglomerates.
|
|
According to Hansen et al. 2015, powerful storms and changes in sea level rise can explain chevrons, as the study elaborates: The lightly indurated ooid sand ridges are several kilometers long (Bahamas) and appear to have originated from the action of long-period waves from a northeasterly Atlantic source. The chevron ridges contain bands of beach fenestrae, formed by air bubbles trapped in fine ooid sand inundated by water and quickly indurated. The internal sedimentary structures including the beach fenestrae and scour structures (Tormey, 2015) show that the chevrons were rapidly emplaced by water rather than wind (Hearty et al., 1998).
|
|
Ooids with radial crystals (such as the aragonitic ooids in the Great Salt Lake, Utah, US) grow by ions extending the lattices of the radial crystals. The mode of growth of ooids with tangential (usually minute needle-like) crystals is less clear. They may be accumulated in a "snowball" fashion from tiny crystals in the sediment or water, or they may crystallize in place on the ooid surface. A hypothesis of growth by accretion (like a snowball) from the polymineralic sediment of fine aragonite, high-magnesium calcite (HMC) and low-magnesium calcite (LMC), must explain how only aragonite needles are added to the ooid cortex.
|
|
Calcite cement in an ooid-rich limestone; Carmel Formation, Jurassic of Utah. Cementation involves ions carried in groundwater chemically precipitating to form new crystalline material between sedimentary grains. The new pore-filling minerals forms "bridges" between original sediment grains, thereby binding them together. In this way sand becomes "sandstone", and gravel becomes "conglomerate" or "breccia".
|
|
The drying of Lake Minchin left a salt layer about thick in the Salar de Uyuni, where gullies formed. Some ooid sediments formed before the Lake Tauca phase. Around 28,000 BP, lake levels rose in Lake Huinaymarca (Lake Titicaca's southern basin), preceding Lake Tauca by about two millennia. During this period, lakes in the Uyuni basin were intermittent.
|
|
An ooid forms as a series of concentric layers around a nucleus. The layers contain crystals arranged radially, tangentially or randomly. The nucleus can be a shell fragment, quartz grain or any other small fragment. Most modern ooids are aragonite, a polymorph of calcium carbonate; some are composed of high-magnesium calcite, and some are bimineralic (layers of calcite and aragonite).
|
|
The Tendaguru ecosystem primarily consisted of three types of environment: shallow, lagoon- like marine environments, tidal flats and low coastal environments; and vegetated inland environments. The marine environment existed above the fair weather wave base and behind siliciclastic and ooid barriers. It appeared to have had little change in salinity levels and experienced tides and storms. The coastal environments consisted of brackish coastal lakes, ponds and pools.
|
|
Ooids usually form on the sea floor, most commonly in shallow tropical seas (around the Bahamas, for example, or in the Persian Gulf). After being buried under additional sediment, these ooid grains can be cemented together to form a sedimentary rock called an oolite. Oolites usually consist of calcium carbonate; these belong to the limestone rock family. Pisoids are similar to ooids, but are larger than 2 mm in diameter, often considerably larger, as with the pisoids in the hot springs at Carlsbad (Karlovy Vary) in the Czech Republic.
|
|
Restoration of two individuals Giraffatitan lived in what is now Tanzania in the Late Jurassic Tendaguru Formation. Since 2012, the boundary between the Kimmeridgian and Tithonian is dated at 152.1 million years ago.Gradstein, F.M.; Ogg, J.G.; Schmitz, M.D. & Ogg, G.M., 2012, A Geologic Time Scale 2012, Elsevier The Tendaguru ecosystem primarily consisted of three types of environment: shallow, lagoon-like marine environments, tidal flats and low coastal environments; and vegetated inland environments. The marine environment existed above the fair weather wave base and behind siliciclastic and ooid barriers.
|
|
This basal succession passes upward in cross-bedded sandstone and minor siltstone and claystone with flaser or lenticular bedding that are interpreted as tidal flat and tidal channel deposits. Horizontal to low-angle cross-bedded, fine- grained sandstone with intercalated bivalve pavements indicates tidal currents that operated in small flood and ebb tidal deltas and along the coast. Stacked successions of trough cross-bedded, medium- to coarse-grained sandstone of the upper part of the Indotrigonia africana Member are interpreted as tidal channel and sand bar deposits. At some places in the surroundings of Tendaguru Hill, these sediments interfinger with oolitic limestone layers that represent high-energy ooid shoals.
|
|