Mineralogy and Petrography of Gulneri Formation in Sulaimaniya Area, North East of Iraq, (Kurdistan)

Gulneri Formation is one of the Cenomanian-Early Turonian sequence in Iraq which was first described by Lancaster Jones (1957) in (Bellenet al., 1959) in Dokan Dam site north-east Iraq, where it consists mainly of about 1.2-2 m of marl and marly limestone with no more than 20% of fissile like shale?(Karim and Taha, 2009).The Formation have early Turonian age according to Abawiet.al 2006, the distribution of the formation is almost unknown in north Iraq but there is some exposures of the formation noticed in the area of the study at the flanks of Azmir anticline represents Azmir area, Weller village, Pushen village as well as the Dokan site dam which previously identified by many researchers, the formation is separated by unconformities with both the overlying limestone of Kometan Formation and underlying limestone of Dokan Formation.The goal of the present study is to identify the main minerals constituents of Gulneri formation in addition to detect the main microfacies and diageneticprocesses that affected the rocks of the formation. Study Area and Geological SettingThe studied sections are located about 7-10 km northeast of Sulaimaniya governorates in Azmir anticline between the high folded zone and imbricated zone at latitudes N 35o 07-90= and 36o 30-60=and longitudes E 46o 44-22= and 44 o 18-53= (Fig. 1 and Fig. 2).The area includes a series of high mountains forming anticlines and synclines have trending Northwest-Southeast, the highest mountainsarepiramagroon, Asos, Karokh, Kura Kazhaw, and Shinarwe.Which have more than 200 m above sea level (Karim, 2009) Azmir fold is a major symmetrical anticline in the study area which is directed parallel to Zagros chains extending NW-SE, (Ma'ala et al., 2004).There are some exposed Cretaceous formations in Azmir anticline represented by Balambo,Dokan,Gulneri, Kometan,Shiranish and Tanjero formation where the Kometan formation represents the major part of Azmiranticline, and Balambo formation represents the core of anticline, The average of dip angle measured on Gulneri, Dokan and Kometan formations is between 70 to 80 degree.Most of the anticline in the area was eroded and formed deep valleys and plains which have dendritic drainage patterns and drain towards Abstract: This study focused on mineralogy, petrography andmicrofacies analysis of Twenty four samples of limestone, marl to marly limestone and shale-likelithofacies of Gulneriformation which exposed in Dokan, Azmir, Weller and Pushen in Sulaymaniyah area north-east Iraq in order to identify the mineralogical content and diagenetic processes that affect the formation aiming to detect the depositional environment of GulneriFormation.The X-Ray diffraction analysis shows that 67% of the samples are composed of calcite followed by 33% quartz, the insoluble residue indicated the presence of quartz and clay minerals represents by palygorskite and illite, palygorskite indicate that the formation was deposited in inner warm marine shelf to dray or semi dray environment, illite indicate the enrichment of Potassium in the environment.The presence of wacky limestone, bioclastic lime mudstone,andbioclastic lime packstonemicrofacies reflect the deposition of formation in shallow to deep open shelf environments.Cementation, recrystallization, silicification, pyritization and mechanical-chemical compaction are the main diagenetic processes that affect the rock formation.