| Popis: |
Due to the historically poor hydrocarbon discoveries in the Triassic of the Arabian Plate, this stratigraphic interval received little attention in comparison to Permian, Jurassic and Cretaceous reservoirs in the region. As a result, existing sequence-stratigraphic models for the Triassic rely on sparse data with little biostratigraphic control and do not allow confident plate-wide correlations. The recent exploration success in Kurdistan, where both source and reservoir rocks are present in Middle-Upper Triassic shelf deposits, highlights the need for a more robust chrono-/sequence-stratigraphic framework. Our contribution towards a more refined stratigraphic understanding stems from outcrop work on the eastern Arabian Plate. There, the scenic Musandam Peninsula offers spectacular exposures of the entire Triassic succession, which we logged and sampled for facies and biostratigraphic analysis using benthic foraminifera, conodonts and macrofossils. Three major second-order depositional cycles can be distinguished: (1) Late Permian-Olenekian, (2)Anisian to Ladinian/Carnian, Norian to Rhaetian. Recent advances in the Triassic timescale in combination with cyclostratigraphic considerations of the studied sections allow the construction of a first sequence-/chrono-stratigraphic framework for the eastern Arabian Plate. This framework suggests that the hiatus at the Triassic/Jurassic boundary might be much shorter than the 20 myrs gap hitherto proposed. |
