Carboniferous Depositional Environments in the Ouachita Mountains–Arkoma Basin Area of Southeastern Oklahoma

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Abstract
The Ouachita Mountains–Arkoma basin region of southeastern Oklahoma was a site of rapid subsidence and sedimentation in middle Carboniferous time. The Ouachita geosyncline was an abyssal, marginal trough to which turbidity currents delivered at least 25,000 ft. of alternating layers of sandstone and shale. This geosynclinal flysch sequence thins northward across the Carboniferous continental slope where it grades laterally into shallow-water shelf sediments of the Arkoma basin area. The trough of rapid subsidence migrated northward and in Pennsylvanian (Morrowan) time was located along the present southern margin of the Arkoma basin. However, the rate of sedimentation in that part of the area kept pace with that of subsidence; thus the shallow-water environment of deposition was maintained. The gradual northward encroachment of the Carboniferous sea onto the flanks of the Ozark uplift was temporarily interrupted on several occasions by static sea-level conditions, during which times deltas prograded basinward from the north and east.

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