| Comparison of growth structures in dip-slip vs. strike-slip dominated rifts: eastern North America |
The E-W Minas Basin arm of the Fundy basin is bounded to the north by the Minas fault zone, which experienced left-lateral oblique-slip in the Mesozoic. [Note: We now know this motion was restricted to the Late Triassic and earliest Jurassic; see papers and abstracts on rift basin inversion.] Half-graben and graben 200-600 m long and infilled with 50-300 m of sediment occur along the faulted margin of the North Mountain Basalt. The long axes of these basins lie at a low angle to the main fault zone. Many structures associated with synsedimentary deformation, including large-scale wedging, unconformities, paleoscarps, paleoscarp talus cones and "hydroplastic" slickensides, are found in these subbasins. Similar styles of deformation characterize the narrow neck between the Newark and Gettysburg basins in Pennsylvania and the Argana basin in Morocco, both of which developed along left-lateral faults oriented oblique to the extension direction.
In the Newark basin, folds with axes at a high angle to associated faults
characterize the hanging wall blocks of faults oriented normal to the extension
direction. The folds do not extend into the footwall, die out in the hanging
wall block away from the fault, and are therefore fault-related. The geometry
of Jurassic lava flows and plutons suggests folding prior to, during, and
after extrusion and intrusion. Similar transverse folds also occur along
predominantly dip-slip faults in the Hartford, Gettysburg, and Culpeper
basins as well as the NE-trending, dip-slip border fault of the main arm
of the Fundy basin.
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