干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

This work deals with the sequence stratigraphy of the subsurface Upper Cretaceous and Cenozoic succession of the eastern Abu Gharadig Basin in the Western Desert of Egypt. The micropaleontological inspection of the cuttings from four wells: WD14/1, East Mubarak-1, East Mubarak-2, East Mubarak-3, revealed 23 foraminiferal biozones and six calcareous nannofossil zones and the presence of several hiatuses. The information obtained from biostratigraphic analysis, well data and seismic interpretation for the studied area has enabled the classification the Upper Cretaceous and Cenozoic succession into five major depositional sequences and these units were then correlated with those recorded in the north Western Desert and elsewhere Most of the major sequence boundaries and the unconformity surfaces inbetween compared well with those of Kharga Oasis, Farafra Oasis, the global cycle chart of Haq et al. (1988), the Western European sea-level curve of Hardenbol et al. (1998) and with the sequence boundaries, flooding surfaces and the sea-level curve of Haq and Al-Qahtani 2005, indicating that most of them are caused by global eustasy and some of the sequence boundaries are related to local tectonism. Three of the identified Upper Cretaceous-Cenozoic major sequences coincide with those of Haq and Al-Qahtani 2005 along the Arabian Platform, while two of them were formed due to local tectonic events.