CASA VENTURA, Beds

QUATERNARY (Pleistocene)

State of Falcón, Venezuela

Author of name: unknown.

Original reference: H. N. Suter, 1937, p. 291.

Original description: H. H. Renz, 1942, p. 562-563.

Although he did not formally name them, Wiedenmayer (1924, p. 511) appears to have been the first author to mention the horizon exposed at a locality named from a house, Casa Ventura, near Curamichate, in eastern Falcón (The name has been misspelled "Bentura" in this paper and in Renz (1942), but H. H. Renz informs us that the correct spelling is Ventura). Wiedenmayer wrote with reference to his Agua Salada "series":

"The clay-marl series, about 1,000 meters thick, is divided by a surface of disconformity, which in places, e.g. at Bentura, is particularly characterized by an indurated oyster bed..."

As H. H. Renz has pointed out (1948, p. 5) although Wiedenmayer was correct in recognizing a discordance between his lower and upper Agua Salada "series" in this area, the oyster bed at Ventura is not related to this unconformity, but is part of a Pleistocene terrace which near Casa Ventura lies disconformably on Wiedenmayer's Lower Agua Salada series.

Suter (1937, p. 291) mentions the Casa Ventura beds as Pleistocene, without description, in the course of his discussion of the Agüide beds:

" . . . it is very probable that these Agüide beds belong to a younger formation, known as "Casa Ventura beds", which are of Pleistocene age".

Senn (1940, correlation chart, p. 1580) refers the Casa Ventura beds to the Pleistocene, but gives no description.

In 1942 H. H. Renz gives the following brief description:

"Casa Bentura [sic] beds (Terrace). On the north coast of eastern Falcón between Curamichat  [sic] and Agüide, fossiliferous clays and sands form cliffs. The beds contain besides Rotalia beccarii Brady in abundance, the following mollusks: Anomalicardia aff. brasiliana Lamarck, Chione aff. walk Guppy, Ostrea sp." (Renz, 1942, p. 562-563).

These beds are referred to the Pleistocene. See also Liddle (1946, correlation chart). A. Bellizzia G. (1951, p. 149-194) presents a geologic-economic study of the same Pleistocene sediments of Agüide, that he calls Agüide or Los Hicacales sands, differentiating them from the "Agüide belds" of the Pliocene.

See also AGUIDE, Beds.

AGUIDE, Beds

QUATERNARY (Pleistocene)

State of Falcón, Venezuela

Probable synonym of CASA VENTURA, Beds.

Author of name: H. H. Suter, 1937.

Original reference: H. H. Suter, 1937, p. 272-273.

Original description: none published.

H. H. Suter (1937, p. 272-273) used this name for some beds overlying the Agua Salada clays with an angular unconformity at the coast of Agüide, distric of Acosta, Falcón. He suggests that the Agüide beds may be synonymous with Pleistocene Casa Ventura beds.

The name Agüide beds of Suter is an obsolete stratigraphic term.

H. H. Renz