Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1989 Neogene Basin Evolution in the Southwestern Dominican Republic: A Foraminiferal Study. Peter Paul Mclaughlin Jr Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Mclaughlin, Peter Paul Jr, "Neogene Basin Evolution in the Southwestern Dominican Republic: A Foraminiferal Study." (1989). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 4734. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/4734 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 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Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Order Number 9002161 Neogene basin evolution in the southwestern Dominican Republic: A foraminiferal study McLaughlin, Peter Paul, Jr., Ph.D. The Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical Col., 1989 UMI 300 N. Zeeb Rd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. NEOGENE BASIN EVOLUTION IN THE SOUTHWESTERN DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: A FORAMINIFERAL STUDY A Dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of Geology and Geophysics by Peter Paul McLaughlin, Jr. B.S., University of Delaware, 1984 May, 1989 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to sincerely thank my advisors, Dr. Barun K. Sen Gupta and Dr. Willem A. van den Bold, for their guidance and invaluable support in this study. I came to Baton Rouge with the intention of working on a masters thesis on foraminifera; instead, they enocuraged me to pursue a doctorate and extended to me all of the resources at their disopsal. I will always be grateful for their help and encouragement. I feel especially fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with Wim van den Bold in the last four and one-half years preceding his retirement from the faculty at L.S.U.. Many hours of enthusiastic discussion of Caribbean geology were passed in his office, and these discussions are the basis of many of the ideas developed in this study. I can only describe the support lent me Barun Sen Gupta as "above and beyond the call of duty". On the logistical end, this ranged from arranging financial support for this project to generous access to his personal computer and library; on the academic end, his knowledge of the Foraminifera and critical evaluation of the ideas in this study helped keep it on firm scientific footing. This study would have been much more difficult and much less productive without the enthusiastic cooperation of Dr. Paul Mann (Institute for Geophysics, University of Texas at Austin). Paul originally suggested a biostratigraphic study in the Azua area; from invaluable assistance in the field to stimulating discussions on regional geology and tectonics, his involvement helped considerably to broaden the scope of the study. Special thanks are also extended to Dr. Joseph Hazel. Besides passing on a contagious enthusiasm for stratigraphy, he critically reviewed manuscripts for this dissertation, provided financial support for one semester, and kindly helped in exploring employment opportunities. I also wish to thank Dr. Charles McCabe and Dr. Arnold Bouma for serving as committee members and for their interest in this project. Chad McCabe's interest in looking at the magnetostratigraphy of the Azua Basin sequence and cooperation in the field work are sincerely appreciated. Arnold Bouma was kind enough to agree to join the committee shortly after his arrival at L.S.U.; his special effort to famialiarize himself with a project already well underway and to lend valuable advice on the sedimentology are greatly appreciated. The assistance of the Direcci6n General de Minerfa, Dominican Republic, is gratefully acknowledged, with special thanks to Ivdn Tavares and Edwin Garcfa of the Departmento de Geologfa. Appreciation is also extended to Edwin Deveaux, Luis Pefia, and Javier Rodriguez for their ideas and aid in the field. i i Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Last, but not least, I would like to thank a number of my fellow students, past and present, who were a great support network; their help, ideas, and friendship made this study and degree much easier to complete. Thanks guys (!): Jim Galluzzo, Scott Wendler, Rich Denne, Earl Manning (presently with LSU Museum of Geoscience), Ivan Gill (now on the faculty at Tulane University), Mike Ruth (George Washington University), and Christoph Huebeck (University of Texas at Austin). Research support was supplied by a National Science Foundation grant to van den Bold and Sen Gupta (EAR 872021), two Chevron USA, Inc. Field Scholarships, the Hugh McKee Micropaleontology Scholarship Fund, an ORF Grant from the university's Office of Graduate Planning, and a Cushman Foundation Student Research Grant. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. I dedicate this work to my wife Jennifer, without whose loving support none of this could have been done. I would also like to give special thanks to my parents for cultivating my interest in learning, for their constant encouragement, and for their financial support down the home stretch. i v Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ii Dedication iv List of Tables vii List of Figures ix List of Plates xiii Abstract xiv Chapter 1 Introduction 1 Chapter 2 Neogene planktonic foraminiferal biostratigraphy 24 of the southwestern Dominican Republic Chapter 3 Geology of the Enriquillo-Azua Basins, Dominican 66 Republic: Depositional History - Foraminiferal and Ostracode evidence Chapter 4 Foraminiferal paleoenvironments of the 150 Azua Basin sequence, Miocene-Pliocene, Dominican Republic Chapter 5 Migration of Neogene marine environments, 226 southwestern Dominican Republic Chapter 6 Neogene benthic foraminifera from the Dominican 244 Republic: Taxonomic problems and solutions Chapter 7 Conclusions 289 Appendix 1 List of foraminiferal species identified in the study 299 v Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Appendix 2 Relative abundance data of benthic foraminiferal species 302 used in multivariate analyses. Vita 318 v i Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1 Estimated relative abundance of planktonic foraminifera in 39 samples from the upper Rio Yaque del Sur and San Juan Valleys. Table 2.2 Estimated relative abundance of planktonic foraminifera in 40 samples from the Quita Coraza area and the Arroyo Las Lajas section of the lower Rio Yaque del Sur Valley and the Rio Via section near Azua. Table 2.3 Estimated relative abundance of planktonic foraminifera in 41 samples from the Fondo Negro area, lower Rio Yaque del Sur Valley. Table 3.1 General bathymetric significance of some benthic foraminiferal 81 species