Preservation of groove mark striae formed by armoured mud clasts: The role of armour sediment size and bed yield stress

Abstract Striated grooves in tool marks are common at the base of sandstones, especially in deep‐marine successions, but their use in physical‐process and environmental reconstruction is underdeveloped. To fill this gap in knowledge, striations in the central groove of chevron marks and in chevron‐less groove marks were formed in the laboratory by dragging tools armoured with silt, sand or gravel across muddy substrates. These experiments simulated the formation of striated grooves by armoured mud clasts carried at the base of quasi‐laminar and fully laminar debris flows, aiming to: (1) delineate the bed shear strengths for the formation of striated grooves at different armour sediment sizes; (2) examine how the preservation potential of striated grooves depends on clay bed rheology and size of armour sediment and (3) discuss how the pre‐lithification clay bed consolidation state and size of armour sediment can be reconstructed from striated grooves in the geological record. The experimental results revealed that tools with small‐diameter silt and sand armours dragged along soft beds lack striations or, at best, leave poorly defined striations, whereas firm beds and gravel armours exhibit well‐defined striations. The spacing of striations formed by gravel clasts corresponds well with the clast diameter, implying that striation spacing is a good proxy for the diameter of armoured gravel under natural conditions. In contrast, the spacing of striae formed by sand armours is greater than the grain diameter, suggesting that the spacing of fine striations can only be used to predict a maximum armour sand size. A comparison of different processes of formation of armoured mud clasts demonstrated that the armouring of mud clasts most probably happens after incorporation of the clasts by erosion into the head of the debris flow and subsequent movement across a loose sandy or gravelly bed surface.