OCUMARE, Formation

TERTIARY (upper Miocene and/or Pliocene)

State of Miranda, Venezuela

Author of name: P. P. Wolcott, 1942 (private report).

Original reference: E. mencher et al., 1951, correlation chart.

Original description: none.

E. Mencher et al. (1951, correlation chart), placed the Ocumare formation in the upper Oligocene. They showed it reposing unconformably upon the Cretaceous and conformably beneath the Oligocene-Miocene Cumaca formation.

R. J. Smith (1953, p. 59) stated that the late Oligocene Ocumare formation is nonmarine.

The type locality of the Ocumare formation is presumably in the vicinity of the town of Ocumare del Tuy. Wolcott apparently, never wrote a description of the Ocumare formation, but in 1942 he assigned it to the middle Oligocene and indicated that it lies unconformably upon the Cretaceous and beneath the "upper Oligocene Cumaca formation". In 1945 (private report) he discarded the term Ocumare formation as a synonym of his Guatire formation, which he called Pliocene, and which is now considered to be upper Miocene and/or Pliocene. At the same time, he split his Cumaca formation of 1940 into a restricted Cumaca formation and a new Tuy formation of upper Miocene age. The Cumaca was geographically limited to the lower Río Tuy embayment and only the Tuy formation was mapped in the Santa Lucía basin, where Ocumare del Tuy is situated. It was determined that the Guatire of the Santa Lucía basin, the former "Ocumare formation", rests unconformably upon both the Cretaceous metamorphics and the upper Miocene Tuy formation, as well as upon basic igneous rocks.

The writer of this article is of the opinion that Wolcott's 1945 elimination of the name Ocumare formation as a synonym of the Guatire formation is the correct course to take.

A. N. Dusenbury, Jr.