PALMAREJO, Beds

TERTIARY (Eocene)

State of Zulia, Venezuela

Author of name: R. A. Liddle, 1928.

Original reference: R. A. Liddle, 1928, p. 303

Original description: ibid.

The Palmarejo beds of Liddle (1928, p. 303) have received their name from the little village of Palmarejo on the west shore of Lake Maracaibo, 20 kilometers north of Maracaibo.

At the type locality only a small part of the Palmarejo beds is exposed. The exposures are chiefly at localities where, because of structural uplifts, the Palmarejo beds reach the surface through the younger deposits. The formation is built up of gray, unctuous, micaceous shales, which are locally arenaceous and intercalated with minute, ferruginous sandstone bands and a few thicker beds of hard, gray sandstone.

The Palmarejo beds, according to Liddle (1946, p. 478 and 479) are identical with the Cañadones formation of Garner (1926, p. 682). According to Liddle (1946, p. 479) an extensive flora and fauna contained in the Palmarejo beds definitely places these sediments in the middle Miocene.

Sutton (1946, p. 1682) correlates the Cañadones formation with his Upper Eocene Las Flores formation and states that another exact equivalent of the Las Flores are the Palmarejo beds of Liddle. At Cañadones and Palmarejo fossils were found which were identified as middle Miocene in Liddle's publication (1946, p. 480 and 481). The Palmarejo beds are definitely Eocene.

The name Palmarejo beds is obsolete; some authors replaced it by Las Flores formation but this procedure is not correct.

W. A. Mohler