Detrital mineral provenance analyses from the Cretaceous McMurray Formation, Alberta and the Holocene Portneuf river delta, North Shore of Quebec / G. Pe-Piper, D.J.W. Piper, A. Blowick, G. Gomez Garcia,...: M183-2/8761E-PDF

"The dispersion of sandy sediment by the early Cretaceous Sable River has been further investigated by detailed mineralogical study of (a) two samples from the Aptian McMurray Formation of Alberta and (b) a Holocene deltaic deposit on the North Shore of the St Lawrence Estuary. Samples from Alberta were to test the hypothesis that Aptian diversion of the Sable River led to it flowing to the Western Interior Seaway, contributing sand to the McMurray Formation. Pb-isotopes in K-feldspar show that most of the first cycle feldspars in the McMurray Formation were derived from the local Trans-Hudson Orogen. The heavy mineral assemblage, particularly the abundance of staurolite and paucity of chromite, is different from that of the Sable River. The Holocene deltaic sand was analysed to identify distinctive heavy minerals from that part of the Grenville terrane. Garnets are similar to enigmatic garnets from the Jurassic of the Mohawk B-93 well, where Pb-isotopes on K-feldspar also suggest a Grenville source. Titania minerals with abundant quartz inclusions, known from both the Scotian Basin and the McMurray Formation, were not present in the Holocene sample and their provenance significance remains enigmatic"--Abstract, page 5.

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