Wilcox
STARR Wilcox Regional Initiative
STARR researchers and students are currently pursuing research on a series of subsurface and outcrop sections across Texas. The work includes facies descriptions, depositional system and sequence stratigraphic interpretations.
Methods of study include the use of well and seismic data, as well as the integration of core descriptions, including the incorporation of recently acquired biostratigraphic and chemostratigraphic data.
New Ecological Refugium and Implications for O&G Exploration and Emerging Energy Solutions
Our work has allowed us to report a new ecological refugium for the Cheirolepidiaceae family (see open access Geology paper: Smith et al., 2024). This discovery allows us to better understand the paleogeography of the Lower Wilcox Group in Central Texas.
In addition, this work adds to ongoing STARR and collaborator efforts to fine tune the biostratigraphic and chronostratigraphic framework of the onshore Wilcox Group. Having an up to date onshore chronostratigraphic zonation is important to accurately correlate stratigraphic units across structurally complex areas (e.g.: growth fault domain along the Gulf Coast).
The Wilcox Group is important as a shallow fresh-water aquifer, as well as a target for O&G exploration and carbon sequestration.
A Wilcox Group PETM succession in outcrops, Bastrop, TX
This study provides stratigraphic, isotopic, and biostratigraphic evidence from Bastrop Texas outcrops for the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). The multidisciplinary data set places the outcrops within a regional framework and enables correlation with down-dip onshore shelf and deepwater Wilcox wells.
Outcrops include the transition from progradational tidal deltas in the Sabinetown (middle Wilcox) containing the PETM negative carbon isotope excursion (NCIE) followed by a significant flooding surface containing an Apectodinium homomorphum acme/superabundance (Yoakum Shale equivalent). A sub-Carrizo multi-million-year unconformity (upper Wilcox bypass surface) underlies transgressive Carrizo tidal delta or estuarine deposits.
