The Todilto Limestone of Middle Jurassic age in the Ambrosia Lake uranium mining district of McKinley County, New Mexico, is the host formation for numerous small to medium-size uranium deposits in joints, shear zones, and fractures within small to large-scale intraformational folds. These folds probably were formed as a result of differential sediment loading when eolain sand dunes of the overlying Summerville Formation of Middle Jurassic age migrated over soft, chemically precipitated, lime muds of the Todilto shortly after their deposition in a regressive, mixed fresh and saline lacustrine or marginal-marine environment of deposition.
Encroachment of Summerville eolian dunes was apparently restricted to relatively narrow beltlike zones trending radially across the Todilto coastline toward the receding Todilto body of water. Intraformational folding is believed to be confined to the pathways of individual eolian dunes or clusters of dunes within the dune belts.
During the process of sediment loading by the migrating dunes, layers of Todilto lime mud were differentially compacted, contorted, and dewatered, producing both small, and large-scale plastic deformation structures including convolute laminations, mounds, rolls, folds, and small anticlines and synclines. During the processes of compaction and dewatering, the mud, in localized areas, reached a point of saturation at which sediment plasticity was lost, causing shearing, fracturing, and jointing of the contorted limestone beds. These areas or zones within the limestone became the preferred sites of uranium mineralization because of the induced transmissivity created by sediment rupture during prolonged sediment loading.
Along the Todilto coastline adjacent to the eolian dune belts, both interdune and coastal sabkha environments dominated the Summerville on the margins of the Todilto body of water. Sediment in these areas consists mainly of claystone, siltstone, sandy siltstone, and very fine grained sandstone which was apparently derived from the winnowing of the finer grained fraction of sediment from adjacent eolian dune fields during eolian activity. Most of the sabkha sediments were probably carried in airborne suspension to the low-lying, ground-water saturated, coastal areas where they were deposited as relatively uniform blanketlike layers. Deposition of sabkha deposits was apparently slow and uniform over most of the Todilto coastal and interdune areas, and did not cause the formation of other small-scale deformation features in underlying Todilto rocks. Large-scale deformational features as well as uranium deposits are notably absent in the Todilto where it is overlain by finer textured sabkha deposits in the Summerville.