Reconstructing the Avalon continent: marginal to inner platform transition in the Cambrian of southern New Brunswick

• Published in: Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences
• Main Author: Landing, Ed
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Canadian Science Publishing 1996
• Subjects: General Earth and Planetary Sciences; Newfoundland
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1139/e96-089; http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/pdf/10.1139/e96-089

A west to east, marginal to inner Avalonian platform transition, comparable to that in southeast Newfoundland and southern Britain, is present in the Cambrian of southern New Brunswick. The Saint John–Caton's Island–Hanford Brook area lay on the marginal platform, and its thick, uppermost Precambrian–lower Lower Cambrian is unconformably overlain by trilobite-bearing, upper Lower Cambrian. An inner platform remnant is preserved in the Cradle Brook outlier 60 km northeast of Saint John. In contrast to the marginal platform sequences, the Cradle Brook outlier has a very thin lower Lower Cambrian and has middle Lower Cambrian strata (Bonavista Group) not present on the marginal platform. The Cradle Brook Lower Cambrian closely resembles inner platform successions in eastern Massachusetts and Trinity and Placentia bays, southeast Newfoundland. A limestone with Camenella baltica Zone fossils on Cradle Brook seems to be the peritidal limestone cap of the subtrilobitic Lower Cambrian known in Avalonian North America (Fosters Point Formation) and England (Home Farm Member).