Hurricane Mountain Formation melange: history of Cambro-Ordovician accretion of the Boundary Mountains terrane within the northern Appalachian orthotectonic zone
The Hurricane Mountain Formation (HMF) melange and associated ophiolitic and volcanogenic formations of Cambrian and lowermost Ordovician age bound the SE margin of the Precambrian Y (Helikian) Chain Lakes Massif in western Maine. HMF melange matrix, though weakly metamorphosed, contains a wide variety of exotic greenschist to amphibolite facies blocks as components of its polymictic assemblage, but blocks of high-grade cratonal rocks such as those of Chain Lakes or Grenville affinity are lacking. Formations of melange exposed in structural culminations of Cambrian and Ordovician rocks NE of the HMF in Maine and in the Fournier Group in New Brunswick are lithologically similar and probably tectonically correlative with the HMF; taken together, they may delineate a common pre-Middle Ordovician tectonic boundary. The authors infer that the Hurricane Mountain and St. Daniel melange belts define the SE and NW margins of the Boundary Mountains accreted terrane (BMT), which may consist of cratonal basement of Chain Lakes affinity extending from eastern Gaspe (deBroucker and St. Julien, 1985) to north-central New Hampshire. The Laurentian continental margin, underlain by Grenville basement, underplated the NW margin of this terrane, marked by the SDF suture zone, in late Cambrian to early Ordovician time, while terranes marked by Cambrian to Tremadocian (.) lithologies dissimilar to the Boundary Mountains terrane were accreted to its outboard margin penecontemporaneously. The docking of the Boundary Mountains terrane and the initiation of its peripheral melanges are equated to the Penobscottian disturbance.
- Research Organization:
- Syracuse Univ., NY (USA)
- OSTI ID:
- 6651962
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-8510489-
- Journal Information:
- Geol. Soc. Am., Abstr. Programs; (United States), Vol. 17; Conference: 98. annual meeting of the Geological Society of America, Orlando, FL, USA, 28 Oct 1985
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
APPALACHIAN MOUNTAINS
OROGENESIS
PLATE TECTONICS
MAINE
QUEBEC
AMPHIBOLITES
CAMBRIAN PERIOD
GEOLOGIC FORMATIONS
GEOLOGIC HISTORY
GNEISSES
MINERALOGY
ORDOVICIAN PERIOD
SCHISTS
VOLCANIC ROCKS
CANADA
FEDERAL REGION I
GEOLOGIC AGES
IGNEOUS ROCKS
METAMORPHIC ROCKS
MOUNTAINS
NORTH AMERICA
PALEOZOIC ERA
ROCKS
TECTONICS
USA
580201* - Geophysics- Seismology & Tectonics- (1980-1989)
580300 - Mineralogy
Petrology
& Rock Mechanics- (-1989)