Depositional and diagenetic processes involved in the development of mudstone successions: a multi proxy study of the Lower Jurassic Cleveland Basin (The North Yorkshire coast, England)

Mud and mudstones are the most abundant (>60%) sediment and sedimentary rock type preserved at and close to the surface of the Earth. They have formed commonly throughout the Phanerozoic and are found in many environments including present-day soils, lake basins, continental shelves, and ocean basins. Mudstones deposited in ancient shelf seas are particularly important as they are very common and significant components of many petroleum systems as sources and seals. In spite of their importance the variability that they exhibit is usually not incorporated into basin-scale facies models as they are assumed to contain little information that is useful in predicting the distribution of reservoir facies. The fundamental mechanisms (physical, chemical and biological) that control the origin of fine-grained sediments in ancient shelf seas is less studied in comparison with other sediments types (e.g. limestones and sandstones). The Middle Jurassic aged succession from the Staithes Sandstone through to the Mulgrave Shale Member (Jet Rock), which is largely continuous and very well-exposed in two locations in the Cleveland Basin, North Yorkshire Coast, England is an ideal natural laboratory to investigate how marginal marine processes evolve into deep marine processes.