Home Multi-Country Search About Admin Login
Cenozoic
Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Carboniferous
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Neoproterozoic
Mesoproterozoic

Search by
Select Region(s) to search
Hold Ctrl (Windows/Linux) or Command (Mac) to select multiple
Beixiangshan Formation

Beixiangshan Fm


Period: 
Jurassic

Age Interval: 
Middle Jurassic, (TJ85)


Province: 
Jiangsu

Type Locality and Naming

It was named by Ju Kuixiang in 1985, and was first cited publicly by Wu Qiqie and others in 1986. The naming section is located in the area extending from South Xiangshan Hill to North Xiangshan Hill of Qixia Mts in the eastern suburbs of Nanjing City, Jiangsu Province; with its reference section being located in a stretch from the Zhongshan Hill to the Linggu Temple.

Synonym:


Lithology and Thickness

It is composed essentially of grey-white and purple medium, and coarse-grained pebble-bearing feldspar-quartz sandstone, lithic sandstone and muddy siltstone, intercalated with purple and grey-green silty mudstone and calcareous mudstone, containing often volcanic clastics and pebbles, with a thickness of about 600 m, and no biotic fossils have been found there.


Lithology Pattern: 
Sandstone


Relationships and Distribution

Lower contact

It represents continuous deposits together with the underlying Nanxiangshan Fm (Zhongshan Fm).

Upper contact

Regionally, the schematic strat column indicates the next younger unit as Xihengshan Fm

Regional extent

It is distributed mainly in a belt extending from Nanjing City to Jiangning City. In northern Jiangsu Province it can be proved to occur by drilling wells. The lithology of it has less changes, yet the thickness of the strata varies more or less greatly from place to place. As in the North Xiangshan Hill the thickness of the formation is of about 612 m; in the area of Shangcun Village, Jiangning City, of about 507 m; in the zone from Zhongshan Hill to the Linggu Temple, of more than 169 m; at Yangfang, of about 157 m; in the areas of Changzhou, Jiangdu and Funing the thickness of the formation determined on the basis of the data collected from the drilling wells there varies from 200 m to 300 m. At the base of the formation there occurs a layer of pebble-bearing sandstone, which makes the formation easier to differentiate itself from the Nanxiangshan Formation.


GeoJSON

null

Fossils

The formation yields few fossils, with poorly-preserved conchostracans being found occasionally. Abundant spore and pollen fossils have been found only in the drilling cores from the basin of northern Jiangsu (Wu Qiqie and others, 1986).


Age 

Schematic strat column in previous "red Chinese Lexicon" had implied that the Beixiangshan Fm spanned the Middle Jurassic (Aalenian-Callovian). Diying Huang (2019; Jurassic integrative stratigraphy and timescale of China. Science China: Earth Sciences, v. 62) re-assigns this Beixiangshan Fm as Bathonian-Kimmeridgian followed by a major hiatus spanning Tithonian-Berriasian (used here).

Age Span: 

    Beginning stage: 
Bathonian

    Fraction up in beginning stage: 
0.0

    Beginning date (Ma): 
168.17

    Ending stage: 
Kimmeridgian

    Fraction up in the ending stage: 
1.0

    Ending date (Ma):  
149.24

Depositional setting

The formation belongs to fluvial and lacustrine deposits.


Depositional pattern:  


Additional Information


Compiler:  

Jingeng Sha (coordinator)