Franklin Mountains and eastern Mackenzie Mountains, Northwest Territories New data from Late Ordovician-Early Silurian Mount Kindle Formation measured sections

Four measured sections of the Late Ordovician-Early Silurian Mount Kindle Formation near Norman Wells, Northwest Territories indicate this unit was deposited on a shallowly dipping carbonate ramp that was subsequently dolomitized. The most shoreward facies are tidal flats that pass basinward into skeletal packstone-grainstone deposited on the ramp crest. Basinward of the ramp crest are burrowed skeletal wackestone-packstone passing downramp into skeletal wackestone or mudstone with nodular chert. The abundance of macrofauna (corals, stromatoporoids, brachiopods, bryozoans, sponges, and crinoids) in this unit indicates that it formed in warm water. The majority of the macrofauna was silicified postdepositionally. Preliminary conodont analysis indicates the base of the Mount Kindle Formation is Late Ordovician (Katian). There is a marked faunal change at a lithological break between shallow-water open-marine skeletal packstone and overlying cherty skeletal mudstone interpreted to be the Ordovician-Silurian unconformity that subdivides the Mount Kindle Formation into two separate sequences.

New data from Late Ordovician-Early Silurian Mount Kindle Formation measured sections, Franklin Mountains and eastern Mackenzie Mountains, Northwest Territories Academic Article