page_title: McMurray Formation
section_title: Relationship to other units
hierarchical_section_title: McMurray Formation / Stratigraphy / Relationship to other units
caption_attribution_description: English: Athabasca oil sand as seen in drill cores. Arrow shows a fragment of fossil wood.
context_page_description: The McMurray Formation is a stratigraphic unit of Early Cretaceous age of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin in northeastern Alberta. It takes the name from Fort McMurray and was first described from outcrops along the banks of the Athabasca River 5 kilometres north of Fort McMurray by F.H. McLearn in 1917. It is a well-studied example of fluvial to estuarine sedimentation, and it is economically important because it hosts most of the vast bitumen resources of the Athabasca Oil Sands region.
context_section_description: The McMurray Formation is conformably overlain by the Wabiskaw Member of the Clearwater Formation. It is underlain by Devonian formations that were tilted and eroded prior to the deposition of the McMurray, resulting in a shallow angular unconformity between the McMurray and the underlying units. The McMurray therefore rests on different Devonian units in different parts of the basin. These range from the Elk Point Group in the east near the Saskatchewan border, to the Waterways Formation along the Athabasca River, and the Banff, Wabamun, and Winterburn Formations farther west.
  The McMurray Formation is equivalent to the lower Mannville Group of Alberta, the Dina Formation of eastern Saskatchewan, the Gething Formation of northwestern Alberta and northeastern British Columbia, and the Ellerslie Formation and Ostracod Beds of central Alberta.
caption: McMurray Formation oil sand as seen in drill cores. Arrow indicates a fragment of fossil wood.
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