Depositional and Diagenetic History of the Edgecliff Reefs of New York and Ontario (Middle Devonian Onondaga Formation).

摘要

To date 31 reefs have been visited, with 22 being mapped (or sampled if too small to map), 2 being written off due to lack of exposure, and 7 either not found or no longer accessible. To complement the work on the Edgecliff reefs a number of stratigraphic section exposures of the Onondaga have been collected, including the Cherry Valley Section and the Springfield Four Corners Section. Also, the basal Onondaga contact has been examined in a number of quarries. Results to date include (a) confirmation of the hypothesis that rugosan mound growth was controlled by degree of water turbulence (roughly equivalent to water depth); (b) discovery of an unexpected diversity of types of Edgecliff reefs; (c) a re-evaluation of the western reefs in terms of their depositional history and mode of growth; (d) discovery of increased stratigraphic complexity in the western region of the state; and (e) tentative confirmation of the ''cool water'' hypothesis for the Edgecliff reefs based upon the discovery of a rich stromatoporoid fauna associated with some of the exposures near Port Colborne, Ontario, Canada.