HOMBRE PINTADO, Sandstone

TERTIARY (upper Oligocene)

State of Falcón, Venezuela

Authors of name: F. Hodson, R. A. Liddle and C. R. Nichols, 1924.

Original reference: R. A. Liddle, 1928, p. 266.

Original description: ibid.

The term Hombre Pintado sandstone was originally applied to a 50-foot sandstone ledge exposed along Quebrada Hombre Pintado, in the flankof the structure of the same name. The Hombre Pintado derives fromIndian pictographs carved in the exposed sandstone.

Liddle (1928, p. 276, 278; 1946, p. 450, 452) described the outcrop at the type locality as gray, massive, cross-bedded, ferruiginous sandstone with coarse conglomerate lenses, enclosed both above and below by sandy nodular shale. The equivalent beds in the southern and western parts of the El Mene de Mauroa oil field consist of 300 to 1000 feet of grayish-white. micaceous, soft sandstone and gray, sandy, thinly-bedded, gypsiferous, ferruginos shale.

The Hombre Pintado sandstone occours at the base of the Cerro Pelado formation. At the type locality it overlies conformably a 1400-foot thickness of upper Agua Clara beds between the Hombre Pintado sandstone and the crest of the anticline. To petroliferous, very thin interbedded sandstones in the lower part of the exposed upper Agua Clara, Liddle (1946, p. 426, 430, 431) applies the term Hombre Pintado oil sands, a designation separate and apart from Hombre Pintado sandstone.

Liddle (1946, p. 451) suggest that the Hombre Pintado sandstone may correlate with the El Alasano sandstone in the area to the east.

W. M. Chappell