TIMIACHE, Formation

UPPER TERTIARY?

State of Trujillo, Venezuela

Author of name: A. Salvador, 1949 (private report)

Original reference: A. Salvador, 1950, Ph. D. Thesis, Stanford University.

Original description: ibid.

The name Timiache was used by Salvador to designate the formation outcropping near the Quebrada Timiache, a tributary of the Rio Carache, near the Llanos de Monay, northern part of the State of Trujillo. A section tn the Cerro de Madre Vieja, located between Quebrada Timiache, the Transandean highway and Quebrada Agua Caliente, was designated as a provisional type locality.

Salvador (1950) described the formation as consisting of an irregular interbedding of highly cross-bedded, medium to coarse-grained sandstones, mottled claystones, siltstones, sandy shales and conglomerate lenses. The most predominant are the mottled red, yellow, green and gray, massive, soft and poorly consolidated claystones. Thin ferruginous beda and clayironstone concretions are common.

A thickness of 810 feet (250 meters) was measured on Cerro de Madre Vieja, but neither the top nor bottom of the formation are exposed. Stratigraphic relationships are uncertain but Salvador (1950) assumed that the Timiache formation unconformably overlaps the Paují formation and is overlain, also unconformably, by Quaternary deposits.

Other than plant remains, the formation contains no fossils. Salvador (1950) assumed a late Tertiary age and a provisional equivalence between the Timiache formation and some part of the Betijoque group.

Gordon A. Young