Salient Platform, British Columbia
Published:
Ediacaran reef systems
Led by Dartmouth postdoctoral fellow Akshay Mehra.
The reef core of the Ediacaran Salient Platform is spectacularly exposed atop the Interbedded Succession of the Upper Miette Group on the east face of Mount Machray as viewed from Salient Mountain, British Columbia.
The view to the northwest from Salient Mountain towards The Colonel, where the Salient Platform is exposed below the black-weathering sandstones of the Cambrian Gog Group that form the prominent peak of The Colonel.
Ediacaran trace fossils (Helminthoidichnites) at the top of on a siltstone bedding plane in the Upper Miette Group on the southwest flank of Salient Mountain.
Ball-and-pillow structures from rapid loading in the Upper Miette Group on the southwest flank of Salient Mountain, BC.
Oncoidal limestone of the “cryptomicrobially laminated facies” (Savage, 2004) of the Upper Miette Group cut by large stylolites in an exposure on the southwest flank of Salient Mountain.
Glacially polished and striated stromatolitic carbonates of the Ediacaran Byng Formation (Salient Platform) on the recently-deglaiated west face of Salient Mountain.
Ediacaran Platella stromatolites of the Byng Formation (Salient Platform) on the west face of Salient Mountain.
Columnar Colonnella stromatolites in the Ediacaran Byng Formation (Salient Platform) on the west face of Salient Mountain.
Fossiliferous debris (Cloudina and Namacalathus) accumulates between reef-forming stromatolites in a Platella bioherm within the Byng Formation (Salient Platform) on the west face of Salient Mountain.
Akshay Mehra and Connor van Weiren traverse a dolomitized Platella bioherm on the west face of Salient Mountain, with the rapidly retreating Salient Mountain glacier in the background.
En echelon fractures in a glacially polished and striated sandstone bed, filled with sparry calcite.
Black-weathered early Cambrian sandstones of the Gog Group overlie pink Ediacaran stromatolitic carbonates of the Byng Formation (Salient Platform) on the north ridge of Salient Mountain, BC.
The view northwest towards Mount Machray and The Colonel from the glaciated platformal carbonate outcrops on the west flank of Salient Mountain
Connor Van Wieren stands atop a large thrombolitic bioherm on the southwest flank of Salient Mountain.