Geology of the La Guajira peninsula
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32685/0120-1425/bolgeol6.1-3.1958.314Keywords:
Fossiliferous Devonian, rise, Guajira fossa, semi-desert, semi-metamorphic series, submersion
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Copyright (c) 1958 Servicio Geológico Colombiano
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Abstract
The La Guajira peninsula, located to the northeast of the Republic, represents the northernmost spur of the South American continent. It is a semi-desert and mountainous territory, with some highlands that climb up to 900 m. In the peninsula’s interior, there are some ancient blocks made up of granite, gneiss, hornblende schists, micacites, quartzites, and a semi-metamorphic series of marls and quartzite sandstones. These strata and rocks are, at least for the most part, older than the fossiliferous Devonian in the southern part of the peninsula.
A little to the south of the central part of the peninsula, the La Guajira Trench, which probably represents the prolongation of the Magdalena River Trench, extends W-E. In and around it and in the eastern part of the peninsula, there are continental sandstones (Rhaetian-Liassic) with porphyrites at the base and above them a marine series of more than 4000 m. thick, almost complete, from the Kimmeridgian to the Campanian. All the above- mentioned strata and rocks were intensively folded during the Eotertiary (Eocene?) and horizontally dislocated so that a considerable reduction of the space in the N-S direction and an extension in the W-E direction resulted.
At the beginning of the Upper Oligocene, partial submergence allowed the sea to enter again, and marine deposits surrounded the old blocks of the Middle Oligocene to Upper Miocene age. In the lower part of the Lower Miocene (Burdigalian?), we observe a sedimentation hiatus. At the end of the Miocene, again weak block movements took place. Since this period, the peninsula has been in slight emersion.
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