Early Devonian Kess-Kess carbonate mud mounds of the eastern Anti-Atlas (Morocco), and their relation to submarine hydrothermal venting

Spectacular conical Early Devonian carbonate buildups up to 55 m high that crop out in the eastern Anti-Atlas of southern Marocco are microbially mediated carbonate mud mounds that were surfaced by soft bottom communities dominated by small tabulate corals. They formed on the Hamar Laghdad elevation, which was created by a submarine volcanic eruption, and were associated with a network of synsedimentary radial and tangential faults that originated by uplift of the intrusive laccolithic body underlying the Kess-Kess Formation, These faults served as conduits for the migration of hydrothermal fluids to the sea floor. Most mounds developed over cross points of radial and tangential faults. Vents were episodically active until the Famennian, but extensive vent carbonate production occurred only during the Emsian, Preliminary geochemical results document that mud-mound carbonates and calcite cements in neptunian dikes precipitated from brines comprising a mixture of hydrothermal fluids and seawater. In addition, carbon isotope compositions (delta(13)C as low as -18 parts per thousand PDB) suggest a contribution from thermogenic methane derived presumably from underlying basaltic intrusives. Aerobic bacterial oxidation of methane is favored as the main process driving carbonate precipitation in, and rapid lithification of, the mounds.