Signatures of storms, oceanic floods and forearc tectonism in marine shelf strata of the Quinault Formation (Pliocene), Washington, USA

Abstract

Marine shelf strata of the Quinault Formation reflect the influences of storm-flood processes and convergent margin tectonism on sedimentation and palaeocommunity distributions in an active forearc basin of Early Pliocene age, western Washington, USA. The sedimentologic, ichnologic and invertebrate megafaunal character of coastal sea cliff exposures in the Pratt Cliff-Duck Creek area, Quinault Indian Nation, reveal five different sedimentary facies - scoured, Rosselia, bioturbated, mixed and Acharax. These facies document the shifting interplay and intensities among storms, waves and river-flood plumes during transgression in inner to mid-shelf settings. Storm sedimentation on the inner shelf is recorded north of Pratt Cliff by amalgamated, proximal tempestites of the scoured facies, which grade up-section to thick deposits of hummocky cross-stratified sandstone, indicative of strong wave influences. These hummocky beds alternate, in metre-scale packages, with banded mudstone and siltstone that have distinctive sedimentologic and ichnofaunal characteristics (Rosselia facies). In particular the mudstone and siltstone occur as 1-15 cm-thick, rhythmic, parallel beds that are laterally continuous, internally homogeneous to faintly laminated, and thus similar in nature to fine-grained, oceanic flood deposits reported from shelf settings offshore the modern Eel River, northern California. The Quinault flood deposits are dominated by the ubiquitous trace fossil Rosselia socialis, comprising vertical, mud-packed, flaring burrows with a sand-filled central shaft which has been inferred as the feeding-dwelling structure of a vermiform invertebrate adapted to high sedimentation rates in inner-shelf settings. Fairweather conditions in between the higher energy periods of storms, waves and floods are recorded north of Pratt Cliff by the mixed facies, which is interpreted as representing the sand and mud zone of the inner- to mid-shelf transition. Quieter, deeper, mid-shelf, fairweather settings are typified by the bioturbated facies south of Pratt Cliff, where lower sedimentation rates and lower physical energies produced extensively bioturbated deposits of sandy siltstone punctuated, in places, by isolated sandy beds of distal tempestites.Quinault strata also chronicle stratigraphic signatures of subduction of the Juan de Fuca plate beneath western Washington during the Pliocene. For example, the imprint of geochemically unusual authigenic carbonates and a chemosynthetic palaeocommunity (Acharax facies) have been interpreted as a methane seep on the Quinault seafloor. Furthermore, a mobile rockground epifauna of pholadid bivalves became established on abundant, dark mudstone cobbles and pebbles sourced from the Hoh Assemblage, a Miocene accretionary prism that was actively deforming as well as interacting with Quinault forearc sediments during the Pliocene. Hoh mudstone clasts were supplied to the Quinault shelf via seafloor-piercing diapirs and eroding melange shear zones, exposures of which today occur in fault contact with Quinault strata along the coast from Taholah to the Raft River.