Type Locality:

North end of Mount Rundle, Banff National Park, Alberta.

Distribution:

The Rundle Group is 698 m (2,288 ft) at the type section, 741 m (2,431 ft) on Tunnel Mountain and 549 m (1,800 ft) in the Mount Head area. The thickness is less in most sections of the front ranges and foothills, the unit thinning eastward and erosional absent over much of eastern Alberta. The lower part is present over a large part of the southern Alberta Plains area.

Locality Data:

Thickness(m): Typical 698.

Lithology:

(Warren, 1927): "The Rundle Formation consists of thick-bedded to massive, light grey to dark grey, coarse grained limestone alternating with beds of dark grey to black, fine grained limestone with or without chert nodules. The chert nodules are more characteristically developed in the fine grained beds and are more common in the lower part of the formation. The coarser grained beds do not, as a rule, contain chert nodules. Some of the lighter colored beds are very coarse grained, containing many fragments of crinoid columns and brachiopods; they probably represent shallow water conditions of deposition. The limestone weathers grey, the finer grained beds assuming a much darker grey than the coarser grained beds. The alternation of these two types of beds produces a very distinct banding of light and dark grey where a section of the formation is well exposed." The light colored, coarse grained beds constitute the echinoderm (crinoidal) limestones characteristic of the Livingstone Formation, occupying the lower part of the Rundle Group, in contrast to limestones and dolomites, with local shales, sandstones and siltstones of the Mount Head Formation representing the upper Rundle section.

Relationship:

The Rundle conformably overlies the Banff Formation and is disconformably overlain by the Rocky Mountain Formation in the front ranges. It is generally unconformably overlain by the Jurassic Fernie Formation in the foothills, and by Lower Cretaceous strata eastward in the plains. In the mountain sections the Rundle comprises the Mount Head and underlying Livingstone Formations; easterly, in the foothills and plains the Mount Head is missing by erosion and the differentiated Turner Valley-Shunda-Pekisko sequence, equivalent of the Livingstone represents the Rundle Group. The Rundle Group equates to the Debolt and Prophet formations to the northwest, and to the Mission Canyon of southern Saskatchewan, northeastern Montana and North Dakota.

History:

Because of the subdivision of the group into smaller units, and with the elevation to group status the term Rundle is not now commonly used to define surface or subsurface sections. Because of significant usage in prior literature, and the validity of the group status in summarizing a major carbonate interval the term will always remain historically important for western Canada geology.

References:

Douglas, R.J.W., 1953b. Carboniferous stratigraphy in the southern Foothills of Alberta; Alberta Soc. Petrol. Geol., 3rd Ann. Field Conf. Guidebook, p. 66-88.

Warren, P.S., 1927. Banff area, Alberta; Geological Survey of Canada, Memoir 153.