Aeolianites in the Jurassic Jurgurra Sandstone, Canning Basin, Western Australia

During the geological mapping of the Mount Anderson Sheet area of the Canning Basin in 1976, an exposure of the Jurassic Jurgurra Sandstone about 20 km north of the type locality was examined and found to contain evidence of aeolian deposition. This note presents an environmental analysis of the section. The Jurgurra Sandstone, the lowest Jurassic unit in the Edgar Range area, was defined by Brunnschweiler (1954) as a massive, medium-grained quartz sandstone, commonly cross-bedded, and containing fossil wood and friable clay pellets. It has been considered to be a marine deposit as it contains poorly preserved marine bivalves. It has been tentatively correlated with the Wallal Sandstone (McWhae, 1961), a subsurface unit recognised during petroleum exploration, which is thought to have a paralic origin and to represent the transgressive deposits of a Jurassic marine advance. Only the upper part of the Jurgurra Sandstone is exposed. The Wallal Sandstone is 120 m thick in the Babrongan No. 1 exploration well (lat. 180° 23 23" S, long. 123° 35 37" E), which is the nearest complete section to the area considered here. It thickens to a maximum recorded thickness of 369 m in Munro No.1 well (lat. 19° 51 47" S, long. 122° 28 28" E). The exposure described occurs just south of the point at which the road to Mowla Bluff station crosses Geegully Creek (Fig. I), about 7 km north of Mowla Bluff Homestead (lat. 18° 32 30 S, long. 123° 40 55 E). It consists of clean, fluted surfaces in the floor and banks of the creek; the vertical thickness exposed averages about 5 m.

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Published (Metadata Record) 02/03/2026
Last updated 03/03/2026
Organisation Australian Federal Government
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