gb 1978.book - Carolina Geological Society

DONALD T. SECOR, JR., AND ARTHUR W. SNOKE
Figure 3. Augen gneiss of the mixed gneiss unit of the Kiokee belt. The foliation in this rock is S 2 . In that the Rb-Sr whole rock isochron
age of this augen gneiss is 291 ± 4 m.y. (Kish, personal comm., 1978), the foliation must be as young or younger than the Late
Carboniferous.
mediate to felsic lapilli tuff, and medium- to coarse-grained
felspathic quartz sandstone. The quartz sandstone contains
lenticular sets of crossbedded strata, 10-200 cm thick, which
in some places are draped by thin seams of pelitic material
(again suggestive of tidal deposition). The upper part of the
Richtex Formation, located west, north and northeast of the
Clouds Creek igneous complex, contains a sequence of massive
siltstone and mudstone. In most outcrops of this upper
sequence it is difficult or impossible to recognize original
bedding.
Facies relationships between the various lithologies of
the Richtex Formation are incompletely understood. The
quartz-rich siltstone and sandstone lithologies, which we
interpret to be tidal shelf deposits, are of widespread distribution.
Johnson (1972) reported these lithologies in the
Columbia area, and our reconnaissance suggests that this
sequence can be traced from Columbia at least as far west as
Edgefield, South Carolina, and possibly to Clark Hill reservoir
on the Savannah River. The quarts-rich lithologies are
interbedded with and grade into most of the other lithologies
characteristic of the Carolina slate belt, such as wacke, mudstone,
and lapilli tuff. This suggests that these other lithologies
were either deposited directly on a tidal shelf or in
environments adjacent to a tidal shelf.
The Richtex Formation in the Batesburg-Emory area has
been traced along strike into rocks mapped as Richtex Formation
by Secor and Wagener (1968). The abundance of
tidal shelf sediments in the Batesburg-Emory area raises
questions concerning the turbidite origin originally made for
the Richtex Formation by Secor and Wagener (1968).
Quartz-rich rocks are also apparently abundant in the eastern
slate belt of North Carolina (Stanley and others, 1977).
KIOKEE BELT
The Kiokee belt was originally named by Crickmay
(1952) for exposures of schists and gneisses in Kiokee
Creek, Columbia County, Georgia. Recently Daniels (1974)
revived the name and applied it to the rocks of medium- to
high-grade metamorphic and associated plutonic rocks that
occurs between the Carolina slate belt on the northwest and
the Belair belt on the southeast. This belt, which includes
Crickmay's type locality, extends from the Irmo area, South
Carolina to near Warrenton, Georgia where structural trends
of the belt are lost in the Sparta granite complex (see
Daniels, 1974, Sheet 1- Interpretative Geologic Map).
Subdivision of the Kiokee belt has recently been
attempted in several areas of South Carolina. Near Irmo,
South Carolina, Tewhey (1977) has delineated numerous
lithologic unties in rocks of the Kiokee belt and has argues
that these rocks are metamorphosed equivalents of the Carolina
slate belt. Although we are not in total agreement with
either Tewhey's (1977) stratigraphy or correlations, his work
is the most detailed lithostratigraphic study between the
rocks of the Carolina slate and Kiokee belts, and our geologic
data in the area support many of his conclusions.
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