High-resolution stratigraphy of the Newark rift basin (early Mesozoic, eastern North America)

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Abstract
VirtuallytheentireLateTriassicandear- liest Jurassic age section of the early Meso- zoic Newark continental rift basin has been recoveredinover6770mofcontinuouscore as part of the Newark Basin Coring Project (NBCP). Core was collected using an offset drilling method at seven sites in the central partofthebasin.Thecoresspanmostofthe fluvial Stockton Formation, all of the lacustrine Lockatong and Passaic forma- tions, the Orange Mountain Basalt, and nearly all of the lacustrine Feltville Forma- tion. The cores allow for the first time the full Triassic-age part of the Newark basin stratigraphic sequence to be described in detail. This includes the gray, purple, and red, mostly fluvial Stockton Formation as well as the 53 members that make up the lacustrine Lockatong (mostly gray and black)andPassaic(mostlyred)formations. The nearly 25% overlap zones between each of the stratigraphically adjacent cores are used to test lateral correlations in detail, scalethecorestooneanother,andcombine them in a 4660-m-thick composite section. This composite shows that the entire post- Stockton sedimentary section consists of a hierarchy of sedimentary cycles, thought to be of Milankovitch climate cycle ori- gin. Lithostratigraphic and magnetostrati- graphic correlations between core overlap zonesandoutcropsdemonstratethatthein- dividual sedimentary cycles can be traced essentially basinwide. The agreement be- tween the cyclostratigraphy and magne- tostratigraphy shows both the cycles and the polarity boundaries to be isochronous horizons. Detailed analysis of the Newark basin shows that high-resolution cyclos- tratigraphy is possible in lacustrine, pri- marily red-bed rift sequences and provides a fine-scale framework for global correla- tions and an understanding of continental tropical climate change.

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