Verification of gravity-flow models: case study from the Lower Eocene sediments (Tylmanowa site, SE Poland)

Abstract

The thick-bedded, deep-water sandstone succession was described at the Tylmanowa site from the Polish Outer Carpathians. This part of the Carpathians is built mainly of the Upper Jurassic to Paleogene deep-water rocks. Succession at the Tylmanowa site is composed of massive, ripple-cross laminated, planar and trough cross-stratified, horizontally laminated and deformed sandstones as well as massive and horizontally laminated mudstones. All these sediments derived from gravity flows that prograde downslope from a basin margin towards the widespread abyssal plain. Exposed succession records the gradual transition from a decelerating debris flow to a turbidity current what is extraordinary in the recent investigations of deep-water sediments. The study succession has been compared with the widely known sediment models, such as: the classic Bouma Sequence (Bouma 1962), the high-density turbidite model (Lowe 1982), the fluxoturbidite model (Ślączka, Thompson 1981) and the hybrid event bed model (Haughton et al. 2009).