STRATIGRAPHY AND PALEOENVIRONMENT OF THE SOEGININA BEDS (PAADLA FORMATION, LOWER LUDLOW, UPPER SILURIAN) ON SAAREMAA ISLAND, ESTONIA

The Soeginina Beds in the Paadla Formation on the island of Saaremaa, western Estonia, are a Lower Ludlow (Upper Silurian) sequence of dolostones, marls, and stromatolites. They represent rocks just above the Wenlock/Ludlow boundary, which is distinguished by a major disconformity that can be correlated to a regional regression on the paleocontinent of Baltica. We interpret the depositional environment of the Soeginina Beds as having been a hypersaline lagoon. Our evidence includes halite crystal molds, oscillation ripples, eurypterid fragments, stromatolites, ostracods, gastropods, Chondrites trace fossils, intraclasts and oncoids. Nautiloid conchs are common, probably because storm currents washed them in. We measured two sections of the Soeginina Beds at Kübassaare, eastern Saaremaa, western Estonia. The beds in one section are virtually horizontal; in the second they are steeply dipping, probably because of Pleistocene glacial ice overpressure. The beds begin with fine-grained dolostone and end with large, well-preserved domical stromatolites. The equivalent section at Soeginina Pank in western Saaremaa (about 86 kilometers away) has larger oncoids, branching coral fragments, and smaller stromatolites. It is also more heavily dolomitized. We interpret these differences as showing the western Soeginina Beds were deposited in slightly deeper, less saline waters than those in the east at Kübassaare.