The stratigraphy of the Lower Ordovician St. George Group, western Newfoundland: the interaction between eustasy and tectonics

The St. George Group is a ~500 m thick sequence of carbonate rock that accumulated during Early and early Middle Ordovician time in a series of shallow subtidal and peritidal environments near the outer edge of a low-latitude continental margin. Lithological variations, in the form of two megacycles, reflect deposition in response to eustatic fluctuations in sea level preceding and during the early stages of Taconic orogenesis.Strata are grouped into four formations of roughly equal thickness. The newly named basal Watts Bight Formation is a lower sequence of peritidal limestones and dolostones and an upper thicker, commonly dolomitized succession of burrowed carbonates distinguished by large digitate thrombolite mounds. The overlying Boat Harbour Formation (new) is a series of muddy, peritidal, shallowing-upward sequences of limestone and dolostone. A widespread subaerial disconformity near the top of the formation, reflecting eustaic sea-level fall and the end of the first megacycle, is marked by breccia, quartz-pebble conglomerate, paleokarst, and (or) extensive dolomitization and is succeeded by higher energy peritidal limestones called the Barbace Cove Member (new). The succeeding, thick, monotonous Catoche Formation (revised) is a succession of fossiliferous subtidal limestones with scattered thrombolite mounds whose upper part is locally affected by extensive, multigeneration dolomitization and Pb–Zn mineralization. The St. George Group is capped by the newly defined Aguathuna Formation, a stack of peritidal dolostones and minor limestones and shales deposited during a period of repeated exposure and synsedimentary faulting. An erosional disconformity, resulting from regional compressional tectonics and eustatic sea-level fall, locally marks the top of the St. George and the second megacycle.