Permian and Pennsylvanian tectonic events in eastern California in relation to major plate motions

Conference · Thu Apr 01 04:00:00 EST 1993 · Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs; (United States)

OSTI ID:5024508

Stevens, C H; Sedlock, R ^[1]; Stone, P ^[2]

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1. San Jose State Univ., CA (United States)
2. Geological Survey, Reston, VA (United States)

Northwest-trending basins cutting across older northeast-trending facies belts in eastern California opened by Middle Pennsylvanian time and continued to develop and expand into the Early Permian. Basin development was accompanied by east-vergent thrust-faulting in the Early Permian and was followed by development of northeast-trending folds and regional uplift in middle and Late Permian time. These events have been considered products of long-tern sinistral truncation of the western North American continental margin. Later, in the Late Permian, extensional faulting created small northeast-trending basins in which deposition of terrestrial and shallow-marine rocks occurred. The author consider all late Paleozoic tectonism in eastern California to have been driven by plate interactions along the western margin of North America and to be only indirectly related to the late Paleozoic collision between North America and Gondwana. They propose that the truncated part of North America was part of the Paleo-pacific plate. In Nevada the margin of this plate, along which the Havallah assemblage eventually was emplaced, was convergent, but in California the margin bent sharply and became transform. This fault continued as the Mojave-Sonora mega-shear into Mexico where the oceanic part of the Paleopacific plate was subducted under Gondwana, forming an extensive arc now represented by rocks in S. America.

• OSTI ID: 5024508
• Report Number(s): CONF-9305259--
• Conference Information: Journal Name: Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs; (United States) Journal Volume: 25:5
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

58 GEOSCIENCES
580000* -- Geosciences
CALIFORNIA
CARBONIFEROUS PERIOD
DEVELOPED COUNTRIES
GEOLOGIC AGES
GEOLOGIC FAULTS
GEOLOGIC FRACTURES
GEOLOGIC HISTORY
GEOLOGIC MODELS
GEOLOGIC STRUCTURES
NORTH AMERICA
PALEOZOIC ERA
PERMIAN PERIOD
PLATE TECTONICS
SEDIMENTARY BASINS
SUBDUCTION ZONES
TECTONICS
USA