The Miami Limestone, A Guide to Their Selected Outcrops and Their Interpretation with a Discussion of Diagenesis in the Formation

Halley, Robert; Evans, Charles

Exposures of the Late Pleistocene Miami Limestone in Dade County provide unexcelled localities at which to view the depositional and early diagenetic features of an ooid shoal complex. Each year hundreds of geologists and geology students make the pilgrimage to the modern carbonate depositional environments of south Florida. Often these groups spend a few hours of their trip viewing the Pleistocene limestones of the Miami area. This volume is written to serve as a field guide to several of the most frequently visited localities. The guide brings together information from diverse sources that bears on the interpretations made from these outcrops, and allows us to vent some of the observations and ruminations on this formation which we have accumulated over several years of studies. This guidebook is principally designed as a one-day field trip for a group of about 50 people. Rather than present the users of this book with a great many field stops, we have selected five stops which we believe illustrate the main features of the formation and which will serve as vehicles for discussion of depositional and diagenetic principles while in the field. Included in an appendix to the body of the text are a number of additional stops for those having both time and a desire to see some of the lesser known, but still important, exposures of the Miami Limestone. We hope this guide will answer some of the questions which are raised by the features observed in outcrop and, more importantly, encourage new thinking and further study on the many problems which remain.