Did Westward Subduction Cause Cretaceous Tertiary Orogeny In The North American Cordillera

Download or read book Did Westward Subduction Cause Cretaceous-Tertiary Orogeny in the North American Cordillera? written by Robert S. Hildebrand and published by Geological Society of America. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Within the Sonora segment to the south, break-off magmatism was also prevalent. Both the Canadian and Sonoran segments have abundant porphyry copper mineralization temporally and spatially associated with the break-off magmas, which suggests a genetic link between slab failure and porphyry copper mineralization. By 53 Ma, eastwardly dipping subduction of Pacific Ocean crust was generating arc magmatism on the amalgamated Cordilleran collision zone in both the Canadian and Sonoran segments. Oceanic schists, such as the Orocopia-Pelona-Rand, were formed in the ocean basin west of Rubia and accreted during initiation of the new easterly dipping subduction zone. A major transform fault, called the Phoenix fault, connects the Sevier fold-thrust belt at the California-Nevada border with that in eastern Mexico and separates the Great Basin and Sonoran segments. It juxtaposes the Sierra-Mojave-Sonora block alongside the Transition Zone of the Colorado Plateau. Cordilleran events affected the subsequent development of western North America. For example, the structural Basin and Range Province appears to coincide with the region where exotic allochthons sit atop North American crust in both the Great Basin and Sonoran segments. Also, within the triangular Columbia embayment, large segments of Rubia appear to have escaped laterally during the Cordilleran orogeny to create a lithospheric "hole" that was later filled by basalt of the Columbia River and Modoc plateaux.