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Laramide sedimentation, folding, and faulting in southern Wind River Range, Wyoming

Conference · · Am. Assoc. Pet. Geol., Bull.; (United States)
OSTI ID:6497291
Surface observations along the southern margin of the Wind River Range in Fremont County, Wyoming, indicate that early motion along the Wind River and Continental faults controlled depositional patterns and lithologic characteristics of the local syntectonic sediments, and that the latest motion on a segment of the Wind River fault between Oregon and Pacific buttes folded some of these same sediments into a monocline. The stratigraphic sequence exposed in the monocline consists (in ascending order) of a lower distal fan or alluvial plain unit (main body of the Wasatch Formation), a lake margin unit (Tipton Tongue of the Green River Formation), a fluvial and deltaic sandbody (Tipton Sandstone), and an alluvial fan unit (Cathedral Bluffs Tongue of the Wasatch Formation). Tectonic implications of these interpretations are: (1) early motion on the Wind River fault controlled the margin of Eocene Lake Gosiute and generated a distal sediment source to the east; (2) late early Eocene uplift of the north side of the Continental fault provided a proximal source for pegmatitic and granitic boulders to the north; (3) last motion on the Wind River fault was latest early Eocene or earliest middle Eocene between Oregon and Pacific buttes; (4) the Wind River fault consists of several segments which moved separately rather than as one, long continuous zone of concurrent faulting; (5) while the Wind River Range was being thrust to the southwest it may have been uncoupled from the basins to the south by a zone of transcurrent faulting; (6) Pliocene or younger recurrent motion along the Continental fault was opposite to that in the Eocene.
Research Organization:
Univ. of Wyoming, Laramie
OSTI ID:
6497291
Report Number(s):
CONF-8309274-
Conference Information:
Journal Name: Am. Assoc. Pet. Geol., Bull.; (United States) Journal Volume: 67:8
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English