Ordovician rocky shoreline deposits–the basal Trenton Group around Quebec City, Canada

Around Quebec City the lowest Trenton Group sediments rest directly upon a highly irregular Precambrian surface and represent the deposits of a high‐energy, irregular, rocky shoreline which developed as the Ordovician sea onlapped a major positive topographic feature known as Montmorency Promontory. The complicated lithofacies mosaic developed along this shoreline consists of: (1) Arkosic sandstones, representing reworked regolith and marginal marine elastics; (2) Solenopora gravels, which comprise partly reworked colonies from the bare rock substrate and partly reworked algal maerls; (3) Fine‐grained limestones, which were deposited in low energy environments between and in the lee of numerous islands and shoals; (4) Skeletal limestones, representing island fringing shoals and ephemeral beaches, with extensive thickets of the ramose bryozoan Hallopora; (5) Bryozoan liméstones, which represent low‐energy, subtidal deposits with abundant delicate bryozoans; and (6) Coquina limestone lenticles, which accumulated in channels cut into the subtidal Bryozoan limestones. The absence of older Ordovician and Cambrian sediments in the vicinity of Quebec City indicates that Montmorency Promontory at the time of deposition of these Trenton deposits was probably manifested as a rugged archipelago. This represented the remnant of large‐scale topographic highlands which had developed at the continental margin during the late Precambrian in association with extensional rifting, transform faulting, and the inception of the Iapetus Ocean. Gradual subsidence of this topographic high and the development of the rocky shoreline relates to the subsequent development of a compressional system and initiation of ocean closure in the early Middle Ordovician.