CAMPO SANTO, Formation

TERTIARY (upper Miocene to Pliocene)

State of Anzoátegui, Venezuela

Author of name: Geologists of Standard Oil Company of Venezuela, 1936.

Original reference: C. González de Juana, 1946, p. 27-29.

Original description: ibid.

The term Campo Santo beds was applied by geologists of the Standard Oil Company of Venezuela in 1936 to about 200 meters of sediments lying above the Punche formation (Freites formation) and below the Mesa formation in the Santa Ana-San Joaquín area of central Anzoátegui.

González de Juana (1946, p. 27-29) described the Campo Santo formation. The name is derived from Campo Santo ranch, which is located about 21 kilometers north-northwest from the town of Pariaguán, District of Aragua, State of Anzoátegui. The type section was stated to extend from the above-mentioned ranch eastward to the foot of the Mesa escarpment. Essential features of the original description were as follows: (1) an upper part made up of clays and laminated silts, lignitic clays, fine sands and ferruginous and chloritic concretions, and (2) a middle and lower part composed of gray to red clays, fine chloritic sands sometimes showing crossbedding, silts with ferruginous and chloritic concretions, gypsum crystals and yellow residues of jarosite. The Campo Santo formation was restricted to essentially non-marine sediments and assigned to the Sacacual group. Its age was considered to be Pliocene.

Hedberg (1950, p. 1206-1207) when describing the principal outcrop area of the Las Piedras formation in central and southern Anzoátegui, just west of the Mesa front, mentions that these beds have also been called Campo Santo formation.

The Campo Santo formation as defined by González de Juana (1946, p. 27-29) appears to include the entire Sacacual group in the area of the type section. In the Anaco-San Mateo area to the northeast, the Algarrobo, Caicaito and Prespuntal formations have been described as stratigraphic units within the Sacacual group.

Wade H. Hadley Jr.