Sedimentary features of tsunami backwash deposits in a shallow marine Miocene setting, Mejillones Peninsula, northern Chile

Miocene shoreface sandstones in the Caleta Herradura half-graben, northern Chile, contain an exceptionally coarse deposit that, based on sedimentologic and stratigraphic features, is regarded as having been laid down during a tsunami event by noncohesive and sediment-laden subaqueous density flows. Interpretations of the principal sediment-depositing mechanisms effective in the tsunami surges rely largely on field observations of deposit geometry and internal sedimentary characteristics. This example comprises two erosively based sedimentation units that were probably deposited by successive waves in the tsunami wave train. The Lower Unit consists of a clast-supported, polymodal, boulder-bearing breccia composed mostly of angular clasts and fewer well-rounded clasts. Framework components are mostly chaotic but may also exhibit either inverse-tonormal grading or crude normal grading. Laterally, changes in characters of depositional facies are common and abrupt. The sand-sized, bioclastic-rich matrix is poorly sorted and very similar to the underlying lower shoreface bioclastic sandstone, implying that soft sediments eroded at the lower erosional surface contributed to the tsunami deposit. The bulk of the Upper Unit is a poorly sorted, breccia-bearing sandstone. Pebbles and cobbles are scattered, massive or normally graded. Sporadic outsized boulders, emplaced as debris fall deposits, may occur along the erosional base. An array of signatures, such as unusually coarse grain size in comparison to the surrounding deposits, erosional bases, the mixed sources of sediments, multiple erosional and depositional events, normal size grading or massive texture, are all considered distinctive features of tsunamigenic deposits. Backwash deposition is indicated by the incorporation within the tsunami deposits of sediments derived from mixed sources, such as angular clasts from nearby subaerial settings, rounded clasts reworked from beach gravels, and bioclastic sand eroded from older, and unconsolidated, shoreface deposits. Notwithstanding the absence of soft-sediment deformation features, the marked facies change from a lower shoreface into an upper shoreface environment through the tsunamiites provides directional information about the origin of the tsunami wave. It was most likely produced by a sea floor fault displacement associated with an episode of sudden, probably coseismic coastal uplift.