Late Cretaceous to early Neogene tectonic development of the southern Sierra Nevada region, California

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan D. Chapman ◽  
David J. Wood ◽  
Jason B. Saleeby ◽  
Zorka Saleeby
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Nevada ◽  
Late Cretaceous ◽  
Early Neogene ◽  
Tectonic Development

scholarly journals Late Cenozoic structure and tectonics of the southern Sierra Nevada–San Joaquin Basin transition, California

Geosphere ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 1164-1205
Author(s):  
Jason Saleeby ◽  
Zorka Saleeby
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Nevada ◽  
Late Cretaceous ◽  
Fault System ◽  
Mantle Lithosphere ◽  
High Angle ◽  
Late Cenozoic ◽  
Sediment Reworking ◽  
Late Neogene ◽  
Early Neogene ◽  
San Joaquin Basin

AbstractThis paper presents a new synthesis for the late Cenozoic tectonic, paleogeographic, and geomorphologic evolution of the southern Sierra Nevada and adjacent eastern San Joaquin Basin. The southern Sierra Nevada and San Joaquin Basin contrast sharply, with the former constituting high-relief basement exposures and the latter constituting a Neogene marine basin with superposed low-relief uplifts actively forming along its margins. Nevertheless, we show that Neogene basinal conditions extended continuously eastward across much of the southern Sierra Nevada, and that during late Neogene–Quaternary time, the intra-Sierran basinal deposits were uplifted and fluvially reworked into the San Joaquin Basin. Early Neogene normal-sense growth faulting was widespread and instrumental in forming sediment accommodation spaces across the entire basinal system. Upon erosion of the intra-Sierran basinal deposits, structural relief that formed on the basement surface by the growth faults emerged as topographic relief. Such “weathered out” fossil fault scarps control much of the modern southern Sierra landscape. This Neogene high-angle fault system followed major Late Cretaceous basement structures that penetrated the crust and that formed in conjunction with partial loss of the region’s underlying mantle lithosphere. This left the region highly prone to surface faulting, volcanism, and surface uplift and/or subsidence transients during subsequent tectonic regimes. The effects of the early Neogene passage of the Mendocino Triple Junction were amplified as a result of the disrupted state of the region’s basement. This entailed widespread high-angle normal faulting, convecting mantle-sourced volcanism, and epeirogenic transients that were instrumental in sediment dispersal, deposition, and reworking patterns. Subsequent phases of epeirogenic deformation forced additional sediment reworking episodes across the southern Sierra Nevada–eastern San Joaquin Basin region during the late Miocene break-off and west tilt of the Sierra Nevada microplate and the Pliocene–Quaternary loss of the region’s residual mantle lithosphere that was left intact from the Late Cretaceous tectonic regime. These late Cenozoic events have left the high local-relief southern Sierra basement denuded of its Neogene basinal cover and emergent immediately adjacent to the eastern San Joaquin Basin and its eastern marginal uplift zone.

Erosion and sedimentation in SE Tibet and Myanmar during the evolution of the Burmese continental margin from the Late Cretaceous to Early Neogene

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peng Zhang ◽  
Lianfu Mei ◽  
Shao-Yong Jiang ◽  
Sihuang Xu ◽  
Raymond A. Donelick ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Continental Margin ◽  
Late Cretaceous ◽  
Early Neogene ◽  
Se Tibet

Tectonic evolution of the central California margin as reflected by detrital zircon composition in the Mount Diablo region

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jared T. Gooley ◽  
Marty Grove ◽  
Stephan A. Graham
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Nevada ◽  
Late Cretaceous ◽  
Late Miocene ◽  
Detrital Zircon ◽  
Middle Eocene ◽  
Forearc Basin ◽  
Zircon Age ◽  
Central California ◽  
Sierra Nevada Batholith ◽  
Early Paleogene

ABSTRACT The Mount Diablo region has been located within a hypothesized persistent corridor for clastic sediment delivery to the central California continental margin over the past ~100 m.y. In this paper, we present new detrital zircon U-Pb geochronology and integrate it with previously established geologic and sedimentologic relationships to document how Late Cretaceous through Cenozoic trends in sandstone composition varied through time in response to changing tectonic environments and paleogeography. Petrographic composition and detrital zircon age distributions of Great Valley forearc stratigraphy demonstrate a transition from axial drainage of the Klamath Mountains to a dominantly transverse Sierra Nevada plutonic source throughout Late Cretaceous–early Paleogene time. The abrupt presence of significant pre-Permian and Late Cretaceous–early Paleogene zircon age components suggests an addition of extraregional sediment derived from the Idaho batholith region and Challis volcanic field into the northern forearc basin by early–middle Eocene time as a result of continental extension and unroofing. New data from the Upper Cenozoic strata in the East Bay region show a punctuated voluminous influx (>30%) of middle Eocene–Miocene detrital zircon age populations that corresponds with westward migration and cessation of silicic ignimbrite eruptions in the Nevada caldera belt (ca. 43–40, 26–23 Ma). Delivery of extraregional sediment to central California diminished by early Miocene time as renewed erosion of the Sierra Nevada batholith and recycling of forearc strata were increasingly replaced by middle–late Miocene andesitic arc–derived sediment that was sourced from Ancestral Cascade volcanism (ca. 15–10 Ma) in the northern Sierra Nevada. Conversely, Cenozoic detrital zircon age distributions representative of the Mesozoic Sierra Nevada batholith and radiolarian chert and blueschist-facies lithics reflect sediment eroded from locally exhumed Mesozoic subduction complex and forearc basin strata. Intermingling of eastern- and western-derived provenance sources is consistent with uplift of the Coast Ranges and reversal of sediment transport associated with the late Miocene transpressive deformation along the Hayward and Calaveras faults. These provenance trends demonstrate a reorganization and expansion of the western continental drainage catchment in the California forearc during the late transition to flat-slab subduction of the Farallon plate, subsequent volcanism, and southwestward migration of the paleodrainage divide during slab rollback, and ultimately the cessation of convergent margin tectonics and initiation of the continental transform margin in north-central California.

Late Cretaceous–Paleocene tectonic development of the NW Vøring Basin

2003 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shicun Ren ◽  
Jan Inge Faleide ◽  
Olav Eldholm ◽  
Jakob Skogseid ◽  
Felix Gradstein
Keyword(s):  
Late Cretaceous ◽  
Tectonic Development ◽  
Vøring Basin

Cretaceous sedimentary blanketing and tectonic rejuvenation in the Western Klamath moutains: Insights from thermochronology

2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Batt ◽  
Gregory Harper ◽  
Matthew Heizler ◽  
Mary Roden-Tice
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Nevada ◽  
Early Cretaceous ◽  
Late Cretaceous ◽  
Sedimentary Basin ◽  
Local Maximum ◽  
Normal Faulting ◽  
Klamath Mountains ◽  
Maximum Thickness

AbstractWe present new thermochronometric analyses of 4 samples from the Western Klamath mountains in California and Oregon, together with a re-evaluation of available geological constraint from a thermo-tectonic perspective. Early Cretaceous cooling of basement samples is seen to reflect significant exhumation by normal faulting, linked to the Separation Episode during which the Klamah region was rifted away from the formerly contiguous Sierra Nevada block. Syn-faulting sedimentation and subsequent Early Cretaceous re-heating of samples establishes the former continuity of scattered Hornbrook Formation remnants as a significant sedimentary basin spanning the Klamath region, with local maximum thickness of at least 5 km. This basin experienced significant inversion during early Cordilleran development around 110–120 Ma, with further unrooting and almost complete eversion in the Late Cretaceous, associated with Laramide uplift of the region.

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