Geoscience impact: a synthesis of studies of the Sudbury Structure

2000 ◽  
Vol 37 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 477-501 ◽  
Author(s):  
D E Boerner ◽  
B Milkereit ◽  
A Davidson

Geophysical probing results are synthesized into a three-dimensional framework necessary for understanding the genesis of the Sudbury Structure, based primarily on seismic reflection results centred on the Sudbury Igneous Complex. Remnants of crustal melting from a catastrophic meteorite impact are superimposed on the juxtaposition of mid-crustal rocks exhumed during the Archean against deformed Paleoproterozoic sedimentary rocks. Sedimentation, metamorphism, deformation, and metasomatic overprints are all part of the post-impact history of Sudbury and tend to dominate the geophysical response of the structure. Pre-impact deformation, although certainly preserved in some aspects of Sudbury geology, is not clearly expressed in the geophysical data, nor are any elements of impact-induced deformation. Geophysical views of the Sudbury Igneous Complex are thus somewhat biased in representing mostly the post-impact, but pre-Grenvillian history of the region, with the exception of igneous events. Establishing the proper context for integrating these geophysical results in the genetic interpretation of the Sudbury Structure depends crucially upon timing constraints.

1994 ◽  
Vol 31 (11) ◽  
pp. 1654-1660 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jianjun Wu ◽  
Bernd Milkereit ◽  
David Boerner

Herein, we present new high-resolution seismic images of the Sudbury Impact Structure, acquired across the Sudbury Igneous Complex and its environs, which provide evidence for the relative timing of the deformation events that reshaped the initial Sudbury Structure. The seismic images show that the lower unit of the Sudbury basinal fill sediments, the Onwatin argillite, is penetrated by a set of blind, imbricated thrusts, whereas the overlying Chelmsford turbidites are unaffected by faulting. We interpret this observation to mean that the deposition of the Chelmsford sediments postdates the latest major deformation of the Sudbury Structure, suggesting that the uniform paleocurrent trends observed in the Chelmsford turbidites are not related to the initial shape of the Sudbury Structure.


2002 ◽  
Vol 97 (7) ◽  
pp. 1541-1562 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. E. Ames ◽  
J. P. Golightly ◽  
P. C. Lightfoot ◽  
H. L. Gibson

2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (11) ◽  
pp. 1324-1336
Author(s):  
D. Anders ◽  
G.R. Osinski ◽  
R.A.F. Grieve ◽  
E.A. Pilles ◽  
A. Pentek ◽  
...  

The 1.85 Ga Sudbury impact structure is considered a remnant of a peak-ring or multi-ring basin with an estimated original diameter of 150 to 200 km. The Offset Dikes are radial and concentric dikes around the Sudbury Igneous Complex (SIC) and are composed of the so-called inclusion-rich Quartz Diorite (IQD) and inclusion-poor Quartz Diorite (QD), and in some Offset Dikes, Metabreccia (MTBX). We carried out a detailed field and analytical investigation of MTBX from the Parkin Offset Dike in the North Range of the Sudbury structure. Our observations suggest that MTBX represents impact breccia that originally formed underneath the Main Mass of the SIC and that was subsequently contact-metamorphosed and entrained during the emplacement of the Parkin Offset Dike. The MTBX bears no resemblance to the QD and IQD in which it is hosted, but it does share many similarities with Footwall Breccia (FWBX), suggesting that the two shared a similar initial origin. A genetic relationship between MTBX and FWBX is also supported by whole rock geochemical analyses.


2002 ◽  
Vol 39 (6) ◽  
pp. 933-942 ◽  
Author(s):  
J P Siddorn ◽  
H C Halls

Early Proterozoic Matachewan mafic dykes that cut the Archean Cartier granite – Levack Gneiss Complex north of the Sudbury Igneous Complex (SIC), Canada, are generally metamorphosed to lower amphibolite facies but exhibit locally unaltered plagioclase. These plagioclase feldspars display a clouding similar to that found in the same swarm in the vicinity of the Kapuskasing uplift, about 200 km to the northwest, where the clouding intensity is due to magnetite exsolution and displays a positive correlation with the depth of dyke emplacement. In the Sudbury area, the clouding intensity, obtained by image analysis of thin sections, increases away from the SIC, opposite to the direction of increasing regional metamorphism in the Archean basement. This suggests that the Levack Gneiss Complex north of the SIC was exhumed prior to the intrusion of 2.47 Ga Matachewan dykes and therefore predates the formation of the SIC and associated impact event. The southward tilting of the crust inferred from the plagioclase-clouding data appears to have involved uplift along the Benny Deformation Zone, but the exact age of this deformation is unknown. It may be associated with the 1.8–1.9 Penokean Orogen, 1.85 Ga Sudbury impact crater, or 2.2–2.4 Ga Blezardian Orogen.


2005 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen A Prevec ◽  
Duncan R Cowan ◽  
Gordon RJ Cooper

New filtering of aeromagnetic images of the Sudbury area indicates the existence of a large, elliptical feature that appears to underlie the deformed Sudbury Structure in the region of the exposed Levack Gneiss Complex, such that the two features have long axes which are significantly orthogonal to one another. A north–south-oriented ellipse appears to be crosscut by that of the Sudbury Structure and does not correspond to known local lithological or structural trends. The magnetic images, combined with existing tectonic, petrological, geothermometric and geobarometric, and geochronological data, are used to suggest the existence of a pre-impact crustal dome in the southernmost Abitibi subprovince, probably related to ca. 2450 Ma rifting and magmatism in the area. This is consistent with existing petrological and tectonic evidence from a variety of sources. Although the doming is itself unrelated to the ca. 1850 Ma Sudbury event, it may have affected the thermal regime existing at the time of impact, which would have profound implications for the subsequent evolution of the Sudbury Igneous Complex.


2021 ◽  
Vol 62 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Thomas Baltz ◽  
Michael Murphy ◽  
Suoya Fan ◽  
Deepak Chamlagain

The Thakkhola Graben has been a region of geologic inquiry for many decades. Although it is widely viewed to be in a class of structures that are important in accommodating the three-dimensional strain within the Himalayan thrust wedge, we still lack a detailed understanding of the total finite strain accommodated by graben-bounding faults, as well as their shape and cross-cutting relationships with structures deeper in the thrust wedge. Using geologic mapping and structural analysis, we show that a suite of pre-extensional shortening structures is offset by normal-oblique faults bounding the Thakkhola Graben that we use to define a piercing line. We calculate these faults to have accommodated 8.7 kilometers of vertical thinning, 7.2 kilometers of arc-perpendicular shear, and only 2.2 kilometers of arc-parallel extension. The magnitude of arc-parallel extension is quite low compared to extensional structures to the west in the Gurla Mandhata-Humla region. The cross-cutting relationships established in this study and timing constraints determined by previous works are consistent with a structural history of crustal thickening leading to foreland propagation of the locus of arc-perpendicular shortening contemporaneous with hinterland extension.


2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-211
Author(s):  
Patricia E. Chu

The Paris avant-garde milieu from which both Cirque Calder/Calder's Circus and Painlevé’s early films emerged was a cultural intersection of art and the twentieth-century life sciences. In turning to the style of current scientific journals, the Paris surrealists can be understood as engaging the (life) sciences not simply as a provider of normative categories of materiality to be dismissed, but as a companion in apprehending the “reality” of a world beneath the surface just as real as the one visible to the naked eye. I will focus in this essay on two modernist practices in new media in the context of the history of the life sciences: Jean Painlevé’s (1902–1989) science films and Alexander Calder's (1898–1976) work in three-dimensional moving art and performance—the Circus. In analyzing Painlevé’s work, I discuss it as exemplary of a moment when life sciences and avant-garde technical methods and philosophies created each other rather than being classified as separate categories of epistemological work. In moving from Painlevé’s films to Alexander Calder's Circus, Painlevé’s cinematography remains at the forefront; I use his film of one of Calder's performances of the Circus, a collaboration the men had taken two decades to complete. Painlevé’s depiction allows us to see the elements of Calder's work that mark it as akin to Painlevé’s own interest in a modern experimental organicism as central to the so-called machine-age. Calder's work can be understood as similarly developing an avant-garde practice along the line between the bestiary of the natural historian and the bestiary of the modern life scientist.


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