Al Khlata glacial deposits in the Oman Mountains and their implications

Abstract

AbstractA thick succession of Al Khlata glacio-lacustrine deposits, including diamictites, crops out in the Wadi Daiqa inlier and there are other possible Al Khlata outcrops in Wadi Amdeh and Wadi al Arabiyin. These outcrops in the Oman Mountains are 100 km north of where the Al Khlata had been thought to pinch out by non-deposition or erosion. Fossil spores and pollen from Wadi Daiqa are highly carbonized having been subject to greenschist facies metamorphism, but are still clearly identifiable as taxa from the Late Carboniferous 2159A zone of the oil-producing areas of interior Oman. This northernmost Al Khlata is sand rich and interpreted to be glacio-lacustrine. Previously the sand-dominated Al Khlata successions north of the Central Oman High have been considered to be glacio-fluvial outwash largely based on their context. The Al Khlata deposits in Wadi Daiqa and the underlying several-kilometre-thick Amdeh succession are preserved in Saih Hatat, probably in a continuation of the Ghaba Salt Basin that itself overlies an accreted terrane from the Pan African orogeny.