The information on this page is a summary description.
The full formal description is available here: Egemkapel Member
| Abbreviation | TtEk |
| Parent unit | Tielt Formation |
| Child units | |
| Lithological description | A thin heavy clay unit of about 6m thick, contrasting with underlying silty to sandy clays of the Kortemark Member and the sandy overlying deposits of the Egem Member. The unit is thinner than the Aalbeke Member. In the Egem Quarry the unit has an erosive basis with a characteristic lag deposit of fossils, mainly fish remains but also snake vertebrae and bird bones and even a rare mammal tooth (Steurbaut, 1998; Smith & Smith, 2003,2013); also, a thin transgressive sandy layer, less than 1m thick, occurs just overlying the erosive basis and well expressed on some borehole logs. This thin basal lag sand is different from and should not be confused with the underlying sandy top of the Kortemark Member (the Yd2 unit, Jacobs et al., 1996a,b). Also the upper boundary with the Egem Member is erosive. The Egemkapel Member is a clay?rich unit, contrasting sharply with the more silty and sandy unit below (Kortemark Member) and above (Egem Member) as shown in core descriptions (see e.g. unit Yd3 in Jacobs et al., 1996a fig. 9), grain?size analysis (see Steurbaut, 1998 fig. 5;) and in the geophysical well pattern (see compendium). |
| Age | |
| Thickness | |
| Area of occurrence | In the legend of the 1:40 000 maps it was included in the top of the Yc unit. Steurbaut & Nolf (1986) included the Egemkapel clay in the top of the Kortemark silt unit and Jacobs et al. (1996 a, b) in the Egem Member. As a thin unit, the Egemkapel was only individualised as a separate Member when its consistent occurrence over the whole central Flanders north of the Mons area became obvious (see e.g. Walstra et al., 2014). The unit disappears towards the east of the East Flanders and Brabant but is still recognised in the Kallo wells 027E0148 & 014E0355 north of Antwerp and in the Rijkevorsel well 007E0200. |
| Type locality | The name Egemkapel refers to the hamlet where the Ampe 053W0060 or Ampe/Egem extraction pit is located (map sheet 21/1, x= 70.150, y= 190.150). The clay unit has been exposed in this pit during a long time in the 80s and 90s, occurring between two erosive horizons: at its base with the underlying Kortemark Member and at its top with the strongly erosive base of the Egem Member of the Hyon Formation. A detailed description of the Ampe/Egem extraction pit anno 1994?1995, comprising the Egemkapel, Egem and Pittem Members can be found in Willems (1995) and Steurbaut, 2015). |
| Alternative names | |
| Authors | Steurbaut, E., De Ceukelaire, M., Lanckacker, T., Matthijs, J., Stassen, P., Van Baelen, H. & Vandenberghe, N. |
| Date | 09/01/2017 |
| Cite as | Steurbaut, E., De Ceukelaire, M., Lanckacker, T., Matthijs, J., Stassen, P., Van Baelen, H. & Vandenberghe, N., 2017. The Egemkapel Member, 09/01/2017. National Commission for Stratigraphy Belgium. http://ncs.naturalsciences.be/lithostratigraphy/Egemkapel-Member |
