23 Upper Crustal Deformation across Continental Interiors from the Mesozoic to the Present (Posters)

Tuesday, 14 March 2017
9:00 AM - 5:30 PM
Grand Ballroom CDE


TEMPORALLY OVERLAPPING INTRACONTINENTAL CONTRACTION AND TERRANE ACCRETION IN THE CENTRAL NORTH AMERICAN CORDILLERA

Paper number: 23-4
Program: Theme Sessions
Time: 9:00 AM – 5:30 PM


Authors

  • K. Gray Presenting Author
    Wichita State University, Wichita, KS

Abstract

Between the Gulf of Alaska and Baja California, the Cordilleran orogen of western North America is >5000-km long, up to 1000-km wide, and incorporates the following elements [listed in order of decreasing age]:
  1. Neoproterozoic to early Paleozoic miogeocline 
  2. mid-Paleozoic and early Mesozoic oceanic allochthons
  3. mid- to late Mesozoic accretion-related orogenic belts [hinterland region]
  4. mid- to late Mesozoic intracontinental contractional belts [foreland region]
  5. mid-Mesozoic to early Cenozoic continental magmatic arcs

Tectonic elements of the central North American Cordillera owe their existence to supercontinental break-up/rifting [Rodinia; passive margin miogeoclinal development], drifting [emplacement of Antler/Sonoma allochthons], and incremental growth of western Laurentia [subduction-related magmatism/accretionary orogenesis]. Mesozoic subduction of oceanic lithosphere under ancestral North America resulted in the

  1. collision of arc terranes [e.g. Klamath, Blue Mountains] with the Laurentian margin
  2. development of thrust belts [e.g. Central Nevada, Sevier] on the continental interior
  3. construction of batholiths [e.g. Sierra Nevada, Idaho] along the continental margin.

In response to long-lived [>100 Myr] ocean-continent plate convergence, compressional deformation propagated ~1000-km eastward from the subduction zone boundary into the continental interior. Jura-Cretaceous terrane accretion [Blue Mountains province] in the Cordilleran hinterland preceded and was partly synchronous with intracontinental contraction in the foreland region. At the latitude of Riggins, Idaho [~45N], ca. 144–92 Ma contraction across the arc–continent boundary and accretion-related Salmon River suture [SRS] was concurrent with thrusting east of the Cretaceous to Eocene Idaho batholith [Sevier thrust belt: STB]. Across this segment of the Cordillera, >300-km of ~E-W shortening was accommodated by the SRS and STB. Given their temporally overlapping nature [SRS and STB], and earlier history recorded by the SRS, the author proposes that terrane accretion in the Cordilleran hinterland drove deformation into frontal portions of the Sevier belt. An alternative to 'non-collisional' orogenesis, this model offers a collision-related explanation for intracontinental tectonism.


Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 49, No. 1

doi: 10.1130/abs/2017SC-289331

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