ABSTRACT Application of updated diatom biochronology to the Monterey Formation and related biosiliceous rocks reveals the imprint of both global paleoclimatic/paleoceanographic and regional tectonic events. A rise in global sea level combined with regional tectonic deepening associated with the development of the transform California margin resulted in the abrupt onset of deposition of fine-grained Monterey sediments that were relatively free from clastic debris between 18 and 16 Ma. The base of the Monterey Formation does not mark a silica shift in diatom deposition from the North Atlantic to the North Pacific Ocean. Rather, a North Atlantic Ocean decline of diatoms after ca. 13 Ma and increasing divergence in nutrient levels between the North Atlantic and North Pacific Oceans between ca. 13 and 11 Ma coincided with a major enhancement of diatom deposition in the Monterey Formation. A stratigraphically condensed interval of phosphate-rich sediments between 13 and 10 Ma in coastal southern California appears to have resulted from sediment starvation in offshore basins during a period of higher sea level, as inland sections such as those in the San Joaquin Valley commonly contain thick sequences of diatomaceous sediment. Increasing latitudinal thermal gradients in the latest Miocene, which triggered a biogenic bloom in the equatorial Pacific Ocean at 8 Ma, also led to enhanced diatom deposition in the uppermost Monterey Formation and overlying biosiliceous rocks. Uplift of the California coastal ranges after ca. 5.2 Ma resulted in an increasing detrital contribution that obscured the presence of diatoms in onshore sediments. Major reduction in coastal upwelling in the early Pliocene ca. 4.6 Ma then caused a drastic reduction of diatoms in sediments offshore southern California.

Late Triassic through Early Cretaceous detrital zircon separated from Lower Cretaceous sedimentary strata provides a record of arc magmatism that is not obscured by products of the mid- to Late Cretaceous surge, which dominate the exposed Sierra Nevada batholith. Matching U-Pb age-probability maxima to U-Pb dates of exposed arc plutonic rocks provides confirmation that the detrital zircon was sourced in the erupting and eroding Sierra Nevada arc. These data suggest that magmatic productivity in the southwestern arc increased steadily through the Middle Jurassic, from an Early Jurassic lull through the Late Jurassic. The detrital-zircon record documents an original footprint of the Early Cretaceous arc extending from its current exposure in the western Sierra Nevada foothills northwestward into the eastern Sacramento Valley, where its relatively mafic roots are presumably buried beneath younger sedimentary strata infilling the Great Valley. The sparse record of Late Triassic magmatism preserved in the analyzed intra-arc and forearc deposits likely reflects greater separations in both time and space between the Early Cretaceous basins and the Triassic arc. Analysis of an atypically dense sample set from the Goldstein Peak Formation intra-arc basin deposits, in conjunction with new data from the Lower Cretaceous Gravelly Flat Formation and published data from other Lower Cretaceous forearc strata of the Great Valley Group, suggests that an even greater density and broader geographic distribution of detrital-zircon samples are needed to more completely reconstruct the record of arc magmatism.

Abstract We begin our journey through the Mesozoic Sierran arc with an examination of the Guadalupe Igneous Complex, a layered Jurassic pluton that intrudes into largely oceanic materials in the Foothills Terrane of the Western Metamorphic belt (Figs. 1-1 and 1-2). The Guadalupe Igneous Complex is an intuitively pleasing target to begin with because of its outboard (western) location and because it consists of some of the most mafic (>8% MgO gabbros) and felsic (high-silica and high-K 2 O granophyres and rhyolites) igneous units that we will see on this trip and thus raises some longstanding petrologic questions about the connections between mafic and felsic granitoids in arcs. It is also an exciting objective because of the preservation of its likely feeder zone (the Hornitos pluton), internal layering, and capping volcanics (Fig. 1-2)…

Abstract In this volume we present seven field trip guides that span the breadth of the geology of central California. The trips are associated with the 2013 Cordilleran Section meeting of the Geological Society of America, convened in Fresno, California. These trips provide guides to some of the most remarkable of geologic localities, which are not only iconic, but form type examples of key geologic phenomena and include Yosemite National Park, the San Andreas fault, the Franciscan complex, and the Sierra Nevada Foothills near Fresno, California. The topics covered by these field trips include the nature of continental transform faults, the initiation of subduction, the origin of the Sierra Nevada batholith, the initiation of the Sierra Nevada arc, Pleistocene vertebrate fossils of the Central Valley, and debris flows triggered from burned watersheds.