Acta Geologica Polonica, Vol. 68 (2018), No. 2, pp. 161–180 DOI: 10.1515/agp-2018-0003 The stratigraphy of the mid Cretaceous (Albian) Upper Greensand Formation of the Wessex Basin and South West England, UK RAMUES GALLOIS1 and HUGH OWEN2 1 92 Stoke Valley Rd., Exeter, UK. E-mail:
[email protected] 2 Department of Earth Sciences, Natural History Museum, Cromwell Rd, London, UK. E-mail:
[email protected] ABSTRACT: Gallois, R. and Owen, H. 2018. The stratigraphy of the mid Cretaceous (Albian) Upper Greensand Formation of the Wessex Basin and South West England, UK. Acta Geologica Polonica, 68 (2), 161–180. Warszawa. The Upper Greensand Formation, mostly capped by the Chalk, crops out on the edges of a broad, dissected plateau in Devon, west Dorset and south Somerset and has an almost continuous outcrop that runs from the Isle of Purbeck to the Vale of Wardour in south Wiltshire. The Formation is well exposed in cliffs in east Devon and the Isle of Purbeck, but is poorly exposed inland. It comprises sandstones and calcarenites with laterally and stratigraphically variable amounts of carbonate cement, glauconite and chert. The sedimentology and palaeon- tology indicate deposition in marginal marine-shelf environments that were at times subject to strong tidal and wave-generated currents. The formation of the Upper Greensand successions in the region was influenced by penecontemporaneous movements on major fault zones, some of which are sited over E-W trending Variscan thrusts in the basement rocks and, locally, on minor faults. Comparison of the principal sedimentary breaks in the succession with the sequence boundaries derived from world-wide sea-level curves suggests that local tec- tonic events mask the effects of any eustatic changes in sea level.