Models and Controls on Sequence Stratigraphy of the Miocene Zhujiang Formation in the Northern Pearl River Mouth Basin

The Pearl River Mouth Basin is located at the passive continental margin of the northern South China Sea. During the Early Miocene, it was converted from a rifted basin to a down-warped basin and deposited the Zhujiang Formation. Influenced by shelf break migrations, inherited paleo-uplifts, mixing of siliciclastic and carbonate sedimentations, fault breaks and so on, characterizations of sequence stratigraphy of the Zhujiang Fm is different from that of a typical passive margin basin. The study in this paper shows that five third-order sequences in the Zhujiang Fm are recognized and categorized to three types of sequence models. Controls on sequence architectures are characterized by variety and variability in time and space.