CAÑADONES, Formation

TERTIARY (Eocene)

State of Zulia, Venezuela

Author of name: A. H. Garner, 1926.

Original reference: A. H. Garner, 1926, p. 682.

Original description: ibid.

The beds outcropping at the ranch called Cañadones, in the southeast part of the district of Mara are called Cañadones formation by Garner (1926, p 682) and described as follows: white to dark grey, fossiliferous shales, sandy shales and thin bedded, brown sandstones, carbonaceous and ferruginous. The age was considered to be Miocene.

The Palmarejo beds of Liddle (1928, p. 478) are identical with the Cañadones formation. According to Liddle (1928, p. 479) an extensive flora and fauna contained in the Palmarejo beds definitely place these sediments in the middle Miocene.

Sutton (1946, p. 1682) correlates the Cañadones formation with his upper Eocene Las Flores formation and states that two exact equivalents of the Las Flores are the Palmarejo beds of Liddle (1928, p. 303, 1946, p. 478) and the Cañadones formation of Garner (1926, p. 682). The type locality of the Cañadones formation is the crest of the Cañadones structure a few kilometers northwest and like Palmarejo, situated in the southeast part of the district of Mara. At both places fossils were found which were misidentified as middle Miocene in Liddle's publication (1928, p. 479). The Palmarejo beds and the Cañadones formation are definitely Eocene.

Cañadones formation is an obsolete name and is replaced by Las Flores formation.

W. A. Mohler