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Geology of Barbados
The island of Barbados is approximately 150 km east of the
Lesser Antilles magmatic island arc and is the only subaerially exposed
pan of the Barbados Ridge accretionary prism. The oldest rocks on Barbados
are exposed in the Scotland District as pelagic shales, sandstones, and
siltstones' ash layers, chalks, and radiolarites. These rocks are complexly
folded and faulted mainly due to Late Tertiary to Quaternary compressional
deformation and uplift. Except for the highlands, the deformed Tertiary
strata are unconformably overlain by a succession of Pleistocene, tectonically
little affected, reef terraces that topographically downstep toward the
northern, eastern and southern coastlines almost concentrically becoming
younger toward the coastline. The Upper Reef Terrace is older than 600
000 years whereas the youngest reef terrace submerged off the Lower Reef
Terrace is of Holocene-Recent age. The terraces formed in response to tectonic
uplift and eustatic sea-level fluctuations that resulted in several episodes
of relative sea-level drop.
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Pleistocene reef terrace
Holocene and Recent Reefs
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