| Preliminary analysis of Newark basin drilling project cores: Implications for basin tectonics |
Time-correlative units in the overlap portions of the cores indicate
that strata thicken (as much as 19% between cores separated by 3.3 km)
from the hinged margin of the basin toward the border fault and/or intrabasinal
normal faults and from the lateral edge of the basin toward its center;
presumably basin subsidence varied similarly. These results are consistent
with neotectonic studies of normal faults that have shown maximum displacement
at the center of a fault, decreasing toward its lateral ends. Assuming
a linear wedge-out constrained by the thickness changes between adjacent
drill sites, we can infer the location of the pre-erosion edge of the depositional
basin: ~7 km from the present-day basin edge in the Princeton area for
the upper Lockatong Formation. Time-equivalent units of those recovered
by the coring also crop out in two other fault blocks. If the intrabasinal
faults are post-depositional, as has been traditionally assumed, the wedging
determined from the core data predicts that the outcrop units should be
~100% thicker than the cored units in the fault block furthest from the
drill sites, yet the outcrop units actually are only marginally thicker.
This implies that at least the intrabasinal fault nearest the drill sites
(Hopewell fault) was syndepositionally active.
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