Continental Deposits of the Eastern Cameros Basin (Northern Spain) During Tithonian–Berriasian Time

Resumen

The Cameros Basin is located in north-central Spain at the northwestern end of the Iberian Ranges (Figure1A). See also Figures 1 and 2 in Soria et al. (this volume) concerning an overview of the geology and tectonics of the Iberian Basin. The evolution of the Cameros Basin as a continental rift basin started in the Tithonian. The basin is principally filled by uppermost Jurassic-Lower Cretaceous continental sediments tha toverlie marine Jurassic deposits (Salomon, 1982a, b; Guiraud and Seguret, 1985; Platt, 1989, 1994a, b; Gomez-Fernandez, 1992; Gómez-Fernández and Meléndez, 1994a, b; Normati, 1994; Normati and Salomon, 1989; Mas et al., 1993).The Cameros Basin is bounded by two important fault systems: one set of extensional faults trending northwest southeast and the other system with northeast southwest-trending strike-slip faults. Due to these paleotectonic systems, the basin is divided into two paleogeographic domains: the western and eastern Cameros Basin (Figure 1). Activity of the two fault systems produced a strong subsidence in the Cameros Basin, which led to the accumulation of a thick (up to 800 m) sedimentary record during the Tithonian Aptian. Metamorphism during the middle Cretaceous, after the cessation of rifting, affected the central part of the Cameros Basin and reached the chloithoid zone (Casquet et al., 1992).