Identification of Amorphous Sedimentary Organic Matter by Transmitted Light Microscopy

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Summary The petroleum source potential of sedimentary rocks often depends to a considerable degree on the quantity and composition of the amorphous organic matter they contain, but hitherto few microscopists have attempted to categorize it. Its origins may be determined from physical characters, although commonly indirect evidence provided by sedimentological and other palaeontological data also has to be taken into account. Thus, I prefer to use terms which do not imply affinities with either land or aquatic plants to describe it. Words such as fibrous, membraneous, pellicular, spongy, granular, flakey, aggregated, finely disseminated and sub-colloidal are applied herein to the variety of amorphous substances which are discussed and illustrated. My aim is at future improvement in correlation between palynofacies and hydrocarbon yield. Many of the samples on which the paper is based are from the northwest European area.