SAN JUAN DE LA VEGA, Formation

TERTIARY (Oligocene)

State of Falcón, Venezuela

Author of name: A. Senn, 1932 (private report).

Original reference: A. Senn, 1935, p. 71.

Original description: none published.

Senn (1935, p. 71-72) mentions the San Juan de la Vega sandstones lying conformably below the Pecaya shale in the hills along the Mitare River west of Pecaya. The mollusk fauna, he says, is the same as that found in sandy sections of the Pecaya. He considered the San Juan de la Vega together with the Bocaina reef limestone as basal formations of his "San Luis stage" (see Mitare group) lying unconformably upon the "Paraiso quartzite".

Only recently has it been demostrated that the San Juan de la Vega formation, occurring in the open anticlines of the Mitare Valley, is a less compressed equivalent of the El Paraiso and Mojino formations in the tightly folded mountains of the southern Falcón. It is the writer's opinion that the definition of the El Paraiso formation should be extended to comprise (all) the sandy lower part of the Oligocene Mitare group, embracing the rocks formerly mapped as Mojino or San Juan de la Vega. Thus, the latter very awkward formation name would fall into disuse.

G. D. Johnson