Channel-like features created by erosive submarine debris flows: Field evidence from the Middle Eocene Ainsa Basin, Spanish Pyrenees

We present field evidence from the Middle Eocene deep-marine Ainsa Basin, Spanish Pyrenees, to show channel-like features likely created by erosive subaqueous debris flows. Evidence from this basin suggests that the most erosive subaqueous debris-flows may create megascours removing up to ∼35 m thickness of sandy submarine-fan deposits from base-of-slope and lower-slope settings. This study suggests that individual debris flows may have been more erosive than turbidity currents, an observation that is opposed to many previous studies from the Ainsa Basin and other ancient deep-water clastic systems. In the Ainsa Basin, many of the debris flows deposited pebbly mudstones immediately above the basal erosion surfaces into which gouging flow-parallel grooves and pebble scours left isolated pebbles embedded in the immediately underlying sandstones. In one particularly well-exposed case, the sandstones immediately below the eroding debris flow were incorporated into it and preserved as sheared, disaggregated, brecciated, and partially liquefied sandstone beds within the pebbly mudstone. Our study suggests that erosion by large-volume debris flows in base-of-slope settings can be at least as important, if not more so, than turbidity currents in producing submarine megascours (probably chutes that, in cross section, superficially resemble submarine channels). This has important implications for understanding the erosivity of debris flows versus turbidity currents in modern and ancient environments, and it has significant implications for hydrocarbon reservoir continuity and heterogeneity, including the origin and recognition of mudstone-filled chutes or channels.