Type Locality:

Pine Point to Fort Resolution, south shore of Great Slave Lake, N.W.T.; 60°50' to 61°10'N; 114°28' to 113°40'W.

Distribution:

See History.

Lithology:

Originally defined as dark fine-grained bituminous limestone and limy shale. Later definitions also included carbonate rocks of several facies.

Relationship:

See History.

History:

As originally used, the term applied to what is now known as the Lonely Bay Formation and Bituminous Limestone and Shale members of Norris (1965a), the maximum thickness of which in the type area is about 115 m (377 ft); approximate correlatives include the Lonely Bay Formation to the north, and the Keg River Formation (excluding reef facies) to the south. This package is gradational with the Chinchaga Formation below and the Buffalo River Member above. Norris (1965a) redefined the term to include the above plus younger strata up to the base of the Presqu'ile-Sulphur Point formations (at that time thought to be a time-stratigraphic unit) and including the forereef argillaceous rocks, the Buffalo River Member and the Horn River shale tongue. As thus conceived, the Pine Point Formtion included the Keg River Platform, plus carbonate and shaly rocks equivalent to approximately the lower two thirds of the Muskeg Formation. Skall (1975) elevated the term to Group, excluded the Keg River Platform but included all strata up to the Watt Mountain Formation. Skall's Pine Point Group includes both carbonate and shale rocks of the Shekelie Barrier complex equivalent to the Muskeg Formation. In addition, the term Pine Point has been applied as follows: 1) all carbonate rocks of the entire Shekelie Barrier complex, from the top of the Chinchaga Formation to the Watt Mountain erosion surface (Law, 1955a); and 2) to include strata equivalent to the Dunedin Formation in British Columbia (Macqueen and Thompson, 1978). It overlies the Fitzgerald Formation with doubtful unconformity. The Pine Point Formation is interpreted to be equivalent to the upper part of the Nahanni Formation.

References:

Cameron, A.E., 1918. Explorations in the vicinity of Great Slave Lake; Geological Survey of Canada, Summary Report 1917, Part C, pp. 21-28.

Law, James, 1955a. Geology of northwestern Alberta and adjacent areas; American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG), Bulletin of the AAPG, vol. 39, no. 10 (October), pp. 1927-1975.

Macqueen, R.W. and Thompson, R.I., 1978. Carbonate-hosted lead-zinc occurrences in northeastern British Columbia with emphasis on the Robb Lake deposit; Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, vol. 15, no. 11 (November), pp. 1737-1762.

Norris, A.W., 1965a. Stratigraphy of Middle Devonian and older Paleozoic rocks of the Great Slave Lake region, Northwest Territories; Geological Survey of Canada, Memoir 322, 180 p.

Skall, H., 1975. The paleoenvironment of the Pine Point lead-zinc district, pp. 22-47: in An issue devoted to Canadian mineral deposits, Economic Geology, vol. 70, no. 1, pp. 1-253.