HR: 0800h
AN: T31C-0580    [Abstracts]
TI: The Cave Canyon Detachment: A Standard for Deformation Expected of the Sevier Desert Detachment
AU: * Anders, M H
EM: manders@ldeo.columbia.edu
AF: Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, Palisades, NY 10964,
AB: The Cave Canyon detachment (CCd)is a Neogene normal fault in the Mineral Mountains of west-central Utah. The Mineral Mountains are located directly south of the Sevier Desert basin. Because of its location, orientation and age constraints the Cave Canyon detachment has been proposed to be a non-active splay of the Sevier Desert detachment. The Sevier Desert detachment (SDd) is thought to be one of the largest displaced active normal faults in North America accruing as much as 47 km of displacement. There are some fundamental differences between the CCd and the SDd, one of those being that the CCd places Paleozoic limestone directly on a granitic pluton whereas the SDd beneath the basin places Neogene terrestrial sediments directly on Paleozoic limestones. Nevertheless, the temperature and depth at the time of movement are similar, thus making the CCd an appropriate analog to what might be expected of material potentially recovered by scientific drilling of the SDd. A suite of samples from above and below the CCd yields a distinctive pattern of brittle deformation. In the lower plate granites deformation is mostly brittle, and in the upper plate there is only a minor zone a few cm thick of mylonitized carbonate. The lower plate granites are characterized by an aureole of healed microfractures that decrease in abundance from the contact to background at over 100 m. Cataclasis is observed well over 100 m from the detachment, and is so intense at the contact that no grain is unaffected. Significant growth of new minerals and cross-cutting quartz veins are observed within a few meters of the detachment. In upper plate carbonate rocks, a cm-thick zone of dynamic recrystallization is observed, above which there is a meter or so of extensive undulose extinction of grains. Outward from this is a zone of strongly preferred oriented twinning. At a distance of 15 m from the contact only minor carbonate veinlets distinguish fault zone rock from unaffected limestone. If the SDd is an active or recently active fault zone with displacement as much as an order of magnitude greater than that of the CCd, and appreciably more deformation would be expected within the fault zone both above and below the detachment surface.
DE: 8109 Continental tectonics: extensional (0905)
SC: Tectonophysics [T]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting