Stratigraphy and Origin of the Cork Red Marble

Abstract

The Cork Red Marble is a coarse, graded but poorly sorted, re-sedimented lime-conglomerate, of Caninian age. It occupies a central position within 4,000 feet of Waulsortian limestones. The pebble content of “porcellanous” calcite mudstone—not in reef facies—is set in a matrix of red clay. Mixed biofacies are represented, because of reworking: fragmented large molluscs, indicative of a nourishing reef habitat, contrast forcibly with a mollusc spat-ostracod assemblage as found in the pebbles. The conglomerate was probably formed when back-reef sediments, which included red clay, were elevated and then redeposited, possibly by turbidity currents