CAPIRICUAL, Formación

TERTIARY (Oligocene)

State of Anzoátegui, Venezuela

Author of name: H. D. Hedberg and A. Pyre, 1944.

Original reference: H. D. Hedberg and A. Pyre, 1944, p. 23.

Original description: ibid.

The Capiricual member of the Santa Inés formation or group was named and published for the first time by Hedberg and Pyre (1944, p. 23) to designate the basal 12,000 feet of the Santa Inés group exposed on the Puerto La Cruz-Oficina highway in the Barcelona area of northeastern Anzoátegui. It consists of interbedded brownish-gray, foraminiferal shales (80%), brownish and greenish-gray and "pepper and salt", finely laminated, fine to medium-grained sandstones 10 to 30 feet thick, streaks and lenses of black chert conglomerate, becoming more common westward, and common seams of clay-ironstone concretions. Lignites and mottled claystones occur in the lower part of the unit, whose age is given (Hedberg and Pyre, 1944, figs. 3 and 4) as lower Oligocene to lower Miocene. It is the lateral equivalent of the combined Capaya, Carapita and Uchirito formations to the east; it grades gradually into the underlying Naricual formation of the Merecure group and is conformably overlain by the Quiamare formation.

Hedberg (1950, p. 1201) raised the unit to formation rank. To the west the formation disappears under the coastal plain south and west of Barcelona. It outcrops in northeastern Anzoátegui and is also known from well sections in that area.

Recent paleontologic evidence indicates that probably the entire formation is of Oligocene age.

Cecily Petzall