Freshwater-phreatic calcite cementation, Schooner Cays, Bahamas

Freshwater-phreatic calcite cementation is an active process on 700 and 2700 yr-old ooid-sand islands in the Schooner Cays, Bahamas. Cement fabrics and textures indicate a general, four-stage model of pore infilling. (1) The precipitation of isolated, decimicron-sized, rhombohedrons of calcite on grain surfaces forms an incipient circumgranular cement. (2) Continued precipitation enlarges crystal sizes and forms new rhombohedral crystals, resulting in a continuous circumgranular rim of cement. (3) Additional cementation quickly masks the circumgranular fabric, producing a partial pore-filling mosaic. (4) The remaining pore space is occluded with a mosaic of calcite cement. Petrographic evidence for the earlier circumgranular rim of cement is not necessarily apparent after the last stage of cementation. Empty pores and all four stages of phreatic-zone cementation were observed in the diagenetically immature 700 yr-old rocks, but only stages 2 through 4 were observed in the diagenetically more mature 2700 yr-old phreatic zone samples. Cements are distributed homogeneously within each pore at every stage, yet because each pore may proceed through the four stages at different rates, each pore can be at a different stage of infilling. This results in an inhomogeneous distribution of cement between pores during the initial stages of cementation. Recognition of amore » cement stratigraphy similar to that described here should aid in the identification of freshwater-phreatic diagenesis in ancient carbonate rock sequences. Variability in the amount of freshwater-phreatic cement between pores should be expected and not interpreted as the product of different paragenetic sequences.« less