Late Paleozoic Deformation of Interior North America: The Greater Ancestral Rocky Mountains

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Publication Date

1996

Publication Title

AAPG Bulletin

Volume Number

80

Issue Number

9

Abstract

Late Paleozoic deformation within interior North America has produced a series of north-northwest- to northwest-trending elongate basins that cover much of Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah. Each basin thickens asymmetrically toward an adjacent region of coeval basement uplift from which it is separated by synsedimentary faults with great vertical relief. The remarkable coincidence in timing, geometry, and apparent structural style throughout the region of late Paleozoic deformation strongly suggests that these paired regions of basin subsidence and basement uplift form a unified system of regional deformation, the greater Ancestral Rocky Mountains. Over this region, basin subsidence and basement uplift were approximately synchronous, beginning in the Chesterian-Morrowan, continuing through the Pennsylvanian, and ending in the Wolfcampian (although minor post-Wolfcampian deformation occurs locally). The basement uplifts show evidence for folding and faulting in the Pennsylvanian and Early Permian. Reverse faults and thrust faults have been drilled over many of the uplifts, but only in the Anadarko region has thrusting of the basement uplifts over the adjacent basin been clearly documented. Extensive basement-involved thrusting also occurs along the margins of the Delaware and Midland basins, and suggests that the entire greater Ancestral Rocky Mountains region probably formed as the result of northeast-southwest-directed-intraplate shortening. Deformation within the greater Ancestral Rocky Mountains was coeval with late Paleozoic subduction along much of the North American plate margin, and has traditionally been related to emplacement of thrust sheets within the Ouachita-Marathon orogenic belt. The nature, timing, and orientation of events along the Ouachita-Marathon belt make it difficult to drive the deformation of the greater Ancestral Rocky Mountains by emplacement of the Ouachita-Marathon belt along the southern margin of North America. We speculate the deformation was driven instead by events within a late Paleozoic Andean margin along the southwestern margin of North America. Evidence for the existence of this previously unrecognized Andean margin comes from east-central Mexico, where a Pennsylvanian and Permian volcanic arc indicates that a northeast-dipping subduction boundary lay to the south and west. The interpretation that deformation throughout the greater Ancestral Rocky Mountains occurs by basement-involved overthrusting on gently to moderately dipping thrust faults suggests that potential hydrocarbon reserves beneath crystalline thrust sheets may be much greater than is generally supposed.

Document Type

Article

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