ABSTRACT
During the middle Oligocene (early Chattian Age), the world climate again cooled, and this resulted in a sea level drop that exposed the entire Dade Subsea, Orange Island, and the Suwannee Strait area to dry land conditions. Geochronologically, the Arcadia formation ranges from the earliest Aquitanian Miocene to the Serravallian Miocene, with a 4 million-year hiatus between the upper and lower members. In Florida, the Tampa member and Nocatee member, and the lower Arcadia beds, are exact equivalents of the Penney farms formation and the Chattahoochee and St. Marks formations of the Panhandle. While the Nocatee member was deposited at the mouth of river systems emptying into the Tampa subsea, the sediments of the Tampa member were deposited on the coral reefs of the Tampa reef tract, within the carbonate reef lagoon, and along the coral cays of the Tampa Archipelago.
