Sedimentology of a late Cambrian regressive sequence (bowers group), Northern Victoria land, Antarctica

The late Cambrian Bowers Group is regressive marine to non-marine. On the basis of associations of textures and sedimentary structures (both primary and biotic), and of palaeocurrent measurements, the sediments of the newly defined Mariner Formation appear to have accumulated on a platform or continental shelf of low gradient and narrow tidal range. Trilobite- and brachiopod-bearing fissile mudstone with sparse channels and scattered stratified sandstone (open marine) is succeeded by wavy-bedded and lenticular-bedded mudstone, muddy sandstone, and rippled sandstone with bands rich in brachiopods (shallow open marine), then mudstone and laminated sandstone with lenticular bodies of oosparite (open marine shoals and protected inner shelf), and red and green, ripple- and parallel-laminated sandstone, interbedded with burrowed muddy sandstone and mudstone, with lenticular bedding (tidal flat). The sharply overlying Camp Ridge Quartzite of cross-bedded sandstone, pebbly sandstone, and sandy pebble conglomerate, is regarded as braided channel alluvium. The detritus appears to have been derived from veined low-grade metamorphic rocks and fine-grained detrital sedimentary rocks that lay south of the area.