Evidence of early Miocene synextensional volcanism and deposition in the northern Calico Mountains, central Mojave metamorphic core complex, southern California, USA

The spatiotemporal link between large-scale continental crustal extension and magmatic activity has been identified by numerous past studies, yet commonly the details of these associations remain unresolved. This study in the central Mojave metamorphic core complex (CMMCC) of southern California (USA) presents new geologic mapping, stratigraphic interpretations, and 40Ar/39Ar geochronology of the Jackhammer and Pickhandle Formations in the northern Calico Mountains to provide additional age constraints on the relative timing of early Miocene volcanism, deposition, and extension. The Jackham­mer Formation, the oldest Tertiary stratigraphic unit, is nonconformable with pre-Cenozoic nonmylonitic metasedimentary and plutonic basement rocks and consists primarily of alluvial deposits and primary to reworked silicic tuffs, interbedded locally with basement-derived avalanche megabreccia, lacustrine limestone, and mafic lava; in addition, the “Mammut ignimbrite”, an ~130-m-thick crystal-rich welded lapilli tuff, is exposed only in the eastern part of the study area and appears to transition laterally into thinner, nonwelded lapilli tuff ~6 km to the west. The Pickhandle Formation conformably overlies the Jackhammer Formation and consists of: (1) a lower assemblage composed of reddish monomictic debris-flow breccias with porphyritic rhyodacitic clasts and silicic block-and-ash-flow deposits of sim­ilar composition; and (2) an upper assemblage of polymictic (metaplutonic basement and rhyodacite) alluvial deposits, primary to reworked lapilli tuff, and local rhyodacitic lava and block-and-ash flows. Rhyodacitic lava domes were emplaced during the final stages of Pickhandle Formation deposition, primarily intruded along preexisting normal fault zones. Sedimentary and volcanic lithofacies suggest that the Jackhammer and Pickhandle Formations were deposited in a volcanic vent–proximal alluvial fan system that formed within a half-graben basin bounded on the east by the southwest-dipping “Amphitheatre fault”. Growth strata within the hanging-wall deposits, primarily southwest-directed paleocurrents, and interbedded alluvial debris-flow, basement-derived megabreccia, and lacustrine deposits adjacent to this fault suggest synextensional deposition in an intra-hanging-wall basin that developed during upper-plate extension in the CMMCC. New 40Ar/39Ar ages for six samples of silicic pyroclastic flows and a lava dome from the synextensional Pickhandle and Jackhammer Formations in the Calico Mountains have a mean age of 20.10 ± 0.06 Ma. This age is 3–4 m.y. younger than the maximum age of initial extension determined by previous studies in other areas of the central Mojave, suggesting that CMMCC extension was not a synchronous large-magnitude regional event. Rather, extension and contemporaneous volcanism was more localized and asynchronous across the region, occurring in many smaller extensional basins that eventually culminated in exposure of the CMMCC mylonitic footwall rocks.