GRIETAS DE DESECACIÓN FLOTANTES

KRAUSE, J.M.; M. SOL RAIGEMBORN

Tucuman

Congreso; XX Congreso Geologico Argentino; 2017

?Mud cracks? or ?desiccation cracks? constitute a common feature observed in both modern and ancient sedimentary environments, among them dried-up ponds, coastal and inland sabkhas, intertidal zones, lakes, lagoons, abandoned channels and floodplains. In despite of the achieved knowledge about processes acting during the formation of the mud cracks, the ?collective unconscious" of sedimentologists considers that mud cracks develop on the wet surface of muddy beds once they were subaerially exposed and the ponds are almost dried up. In this contribution, we describe a modern example in which mud cracks develop on a muddy surface floating on water filling shallow ponds. The existence of a liquid phase between the cracked muddy surface and the sedimentary substratum is an unusual fact omitted in the classic sedimentologic literature and modern contributions, and provide interesting implications in different fields of geology, among them environmental sedimentology, paleoedaphology and technology.