Sediment types

A wide range of terrestrial and marine sediments of Devonian age are known internationally, and there is a corresponding variety of sedimentary rock types. Devonian igneous activity was considerable, albeit localized. Laurussia is thought to have been near-tropical and sometimes arid. Playa facies, eolian dunes, and fan breccias are known. Fluviatile sediments, deposited by water under flash-flood conditions, have been identified, and these are correlated to alluvial sediments of broad coastal flats. There are lacustrine deposits of freshwater or supersaline type. Similar facies are known in other continental areas of the Devonian. Similarly, nearshore clastic, prodelta, and delta sandstones and offshore mud facies are comparable to those known in other periods.

Devonian sedimentary rocks include the spectacular carbonate reef deposits of Western Australia, Europe, and western Canada, where the reefs are largely formed of stromatoporoids. These marine invertebrates suddenly vanished almost entirely by the end of the Frasnian Age, after which reefs were formed locally of cyanobacterian stromatolites. Other areas have reefs formed by mud mounds, and there are spectacular examples in southern Morocco, southern Algeria, and Mauritania. Also distinctively Devonian is the development of locally extensive black shale deposits. The Upper Devonian Antrim, New Albany, and Chattanooga shales are of this variety, and in Europe the German Hunsrückschiefer and Wissenbacherschiefer are similar. The latter are frequently characterized by distinctive fossils, though rarely of the benthic variety, indicating that they were formed when seafloor oxygen levels were very low. Distinctive condensed pelagic limestones rich in fossil cephalopods occur locally in Europe and the Urals; these form the facies termed Cephalopodenkalk or Knollenkalk in Germany and griotte in France. In former times the latter was worked for marble. Evaporite deposits are widespread, but coals are rare. There is no firm evidence for glacial deposits except in the late Devonian of Brazil. Various types of volcanic rocks have been observed in the areas that were converging island-arc regimes. Some volcanic ash horizons, such as the Tioga Metabentonite of the eastern United States, represent short-term events that are useful for correlation.

Europe

A line passing from the Bristol Channel eastward to northern Belgium and Germany roughly demarcates the Devonian marine area from the Old Red Sandstone continental deposits to the south. The continental deposits, which characteristically are red-stained with iron oxide, extend also to Greenland, Spitsbergen, Bear Island, and Norway. The British geologist Robert Jameson coined the term Old Red Sandstone in 1808, mistakenly thinking it to be A.G. Werner’s Aelter Rother Sandstein, now known to be of Permian age. The rocks of this wide area have a remarkable affinity in both fauna and rock type and are usually considered to have been united in Devonian times. The relationships with the underlying Silurian System are seen in the classic Welsh borderlands, where the Ludlow Bone Bed was taken as the boundary until international agreement placed it somewhat higher. In Wales, southern Ireland, and the Scottish Lowlands, thicknesses of detrital deposits, chiefly sandstones, accumulated to as much as 6,100 metres (20,000 feet) in places. These sediments are rich in fish and plants, as are the eastern Greenland and Norwegian deposits. Widespread volcanics occur in Scotland.

Devonian rocks in Devon and Cornwall are mostly marine, but there are intercalations of terrestrial deposits from the north. In northern Devon, at least 3,660 metres (12,000 feet) of shales, thin limestones, sandstones, and conglomerates occur. The latter two lithologies are typical of the Hangman Grits and Pickwell Down Sandstones, which are the main terrestrial intercalations. However, in southern Devon, reef limestones occur in Middle Devonian formations, and the Upper Devonian formation locally shows very thin sequences formed on submarine rises and contemporary pillow lavas in basinal areas. In northern Cornwall both the Middle and Upper Devonian formations primarily occur in slate facies. Fossils found in these rocks have permitted detailed correlations with the Belgian and German sequences.

Devonian rocks of mixed terrestrial and marine type are known from boreholes under London, and these form a link with the Pas de Calais outcrops and to the classic areas of the Ardennes. There, between the Dinant Basin and Namur Basin to the north, is evidence of a northward landmass, as in Devon. Both the Lower and Upper Devonian formations consist of nearshore and terrigenous sediments that reach thicknesses of 2,740 metres (9,000 feet) and 460 metres (1,500 feet), respectively. The Middle Devonian and lower Upper Devonian (that is, the Eifelian, Givetian, and Frasnian stages, whose former type sections are here) structures consist mainly of limestones and shales and reach at least 1,500 metres (4,900 feet) in the south. Reefs are especially well developed in the Frasnian and occur as isolated masses, usually less than about 800 metres (2,600 feet) in length, separated by shales. Equivalents to the north show red and green silts and shales of marginal continental marine sediments. Because the Belgian Devonian rocks are well exposed along a north-south line, their changes in thickness, lithology, and fauna have been well documented.

The Eifel forms a natural eastern extension of the Ardennes, and a somewhat similar succession occurs there. The Lower Devonian pattern is nonmarine, and the Middle Devonian and Frasnian formations have a poor reef development, but the calcareous shales and limestones carry a rich and famous fauna. The GSSP defining the Lower-Middle Devonian boundary and base of the Eifelian Stage is at Schöenecken-Wetteldorf in the Eifel. The uppermost Devonian structure is not preserved.

The Rhine valley, along with the Middle Rhine Highlands to the east, has been the subject of extensive study by the numerous German universities that surround it since the early days of geology. Again, a northern sediment source is generally indicated, but a borehole well to the north near Münster has encountered Middle and lower Upper Devonian marine limestones. To the south, approaching the Hunsrück-Taunus mountains, there is also evidence of a landmass. Between these areas a rich Devonian sequence is exposed in folded terrain. The maximum thickness is 9,140 metres (30,000 feet). The Lower Devonian formation consists of slates and sandstones. The slate has been much worked to clad houses and castles. A ledge of Emsian sandstone in the Rhine gorge is the setting for the Lorelei legend. Limestones are common in the Givetian and are termed Massenkalk. Middle and Upper Devonian areas of thin sedimentation, as in Devon, are interpreted as deposits on submarine ridges. These are commonly nodular limestones that are rich in cephalopods and that occur between thick shale sequences. Evidence of volcanic activity is common, and this has been invoked to explain the concentrations of sedimentary hematite iron ores in the Givetian and Frasnian. The Harz Mountains show a more calcareous Lower Devonian section. Here, copper, lead, and zinc have been exploited from lodes in the famous Wissenbach Slate.

A calcareous Lower Devonian succession, the Bohemian facies, occurs in the Prague Basin of eastern Europe. A continuous marine succession formed from the Silurian into the Devonian, and the boundary is drawn at the top of the Silurian Series with the crinoid genus Scyphocrinites. The overlying Lochkovian and Pragian formations include the Koneprusy Limestone, which contains substantial reef deposits. The GSSP defining the base of the Devonian System and the Lochkovian Stage is at Klonk, and that defining the base of the Pragian is at Velká Chuchle, near Prague. The Upper Devonian structure is not preserved. In Moravia, complete successions of calcareous and basinal volcanic sediments occur.

Devonian rocks of a type analogous to those of southern England and the Ardennes crop out in Brittany. Farther south, outcrops occur in France, Spain, and Portugal. The GSSPs defining the Middle-Upper Devonian boundary and base of the Frasnian Stage, the base of the Famennian Stage, and the Devonian-Carboniferous boundary are drawn near Cessenon in southern France. The successions of the Pyrenees, Noire Mountains, and Carnic Alps include deepwater limestones. Marine deposits occur in the Balkan Peninsula, including North Macedonia as well as Romania. The southern Polish outcrops of the Holy Cross Mountains are especially famous. They include a lower marine and continental series with a calcareous Middle Devonian section and an Upper Devonian section of reefs and shales rich in ammonites and trilobites.

In Podolia along the Dniester (Dnestr) River are fine marine sections that go up well into the Lower Devonian and are overlain by the Dniester Series of the Old Red Sandstone type. During the entire Devonian, the Ural Mountains formed a depressional trough linked northward to Novaya Zemlya and southward to the Crimean-Caucasian geosyncline that, along with the southern European outcrops already mentioned, formed part of the original Tethyan sediments of the Alpine-Himalayan fold system of the present day. In European Russia, Old Red Sandstone deposits are widespread, but marine tongues stretched westward from the Urals to reach Moscow in the Middle Devonian and St. Petersburg in the lower Upper Devonian. A remarkable series of boreholes revealed these relationships in great detail, and there is widespread evidence for salt lakes. Apart from the St. Petersburg outcrop and those along the Don River south of Moscow, the salt lakes are known from subsurface data only. Of economic importance here are the Timan-Pechora oil and gas field and the oil and potash of the Pripet Marshes. The North African areas of Algeria and especially Morocco are noted for their wealth of Devonian fossils. The GSSP defining the base of the Givetian Stage is at Mech Irdane, near Erfoud in southern Morocco.

Asia

Devonian rocks are widespread in Asia east of the Ural Mountains; however, in Devonian time Asia was composed of separated microcratons, or terranes, that appear to have been attached or adjacent to the northern margin of Gondwana. The coalescence into present-day Asia took place after the Devonian. Devonian rocks are well known to fringe the central Siberian craton (a Devonian microcontinent), particularly in some of the northern coastal islands, the Kolyma River basin, and even farther east in Siberia. A particularly good record has been found in Kazakhstan. Devonian rocks occur in the Caucasus and Tien Shan mountains along the southern border of Kyrgyzstan, and there is an excellent carbonate sequence in the Salair and a full marine sequence in the Altai. The Altai-Sayan area contains a wealth of Old Red Sandstone fishes and plants. The GSSP defining the base of the Emsian Stage is in the Zinzil’ban Gorge of Uzbekistan.

Scattered Devonian sequences occur in Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan, but the Himalayan records need revision, as it has now been determined that reported significant fossils are spurious and come from quite different areas. Isolated Devonian rocks are known in Vietnam, Myanmar (Burma), and Malaysia.

The Greater Khingan Range has a good record of Middle and Upper Devonian marine deposits. China is especially noted for its Devonian rocks; both marine and nonmarine facies occur. Reefs and carbonate deposits also are well developed, and the photographically spectacular sugar-loaf hills near Guilin are of Devonian age. Much research by Chinese geologists since the early 1980s has led to great advances in knowledge of the Devonian in the many outcrops in China. Devonian rocks in Japan contain the plant genus Leptophloeum, which is also widespread in China.