Abstract Recent detrital zircon results in both the central Appalachians and New England demonstrate that middle Ordovician, ‘Taconic’ island arcs, long considered to be peri-Laurentian, are built upon or associated with rock of Gondwanan affinity. This trip will visit granulite-facies orthogneiss of the Wilmington Complex, a 475–480 Ma magmatic arc, and the adjacent Wissahickon Formation. The Wissahickon Formation is intruded by and interlayered with meta-igneous rocks with arc affinity and contains detrital zircon populations characteristic of both Gondwanan and Laurentian sources. The Chester Park Gneiss, now known to have detrital zircon age spectra which match the Gondwana-derived Moretown Terrane in New England, is also featured. The trip will examine contact relationships between arc and Laurentian rocks and a newly discovered location where metapelitic rock contains garnet with crystallographically oriented rutile inclusions, possibly indicative of ultrahigh-temperature or ultrahigh-pressure metamorphism. We will discuss similarities between rocks of the central and northern Appalachians and evaluate a new model wherein the central Appalachian rocks were originally part of the Taconic arc in New England and were translated by strike-slip deformation to their present position in the orogen.

Abstract The Salisbury embayment is a broad tectonic downwarp that is filled by generally seaward-thickening, wedge-shaped deposits of the central Atlantic Coastal Plain. Our two-day field trip will take us to the western side of this embayment from the Fall Zone in Washington, D.C., to some of the bluffs along Aquia Creek and the Potomac River in Virginia, and then to the Calvert Cliffs on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. We will see fluvial-deltaic Cretaceous deposits of the Potomac Formation. We will then focus on Cenozoic marine deposits. Transgressive and highstand deposits are stacked upon each other with unconformities separating them; rarely are regressive or lowstand deposits preserved. The Paleocene and Eocene shallow shelf deposits consist of glauconitic, silty sands that contain varying amounts of marine shells. The Miocene shallow shelf deposits consist of diatomaceous silts and silty and shelly sands. The lithology, thickness, dip, preservation, and distribution of the succession of coastal plain sediments that were deposited in our field-trip area are, to a great extent, structurally controlled. Surficial and subsurface mapping using numerous continuous cores, auger holes, water-well data, and seismic surveys has documented some folds and numerous high-angle reverse and normal faults that offset Cretaceous and Cenozoic deposits. Many of these structures are rooted in early Mesozoic and/or Paleozoic NE-trending regional tectonic fault systems that underlie the Atlantic Coastal Plain. On Day 1, we will focus on two fault systems (stops 1-2; Stafford fault system and the Skinkers Neck-Brandywine fault system and their constituent fault zones and faults). We will then see (stops 3-5) a few of the remaining exposures of largely unlithified marine Paleocene and Eocene strata along the Virginia side of the Potomac River including the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum boundary clay. These exposures are capped by fluvial-estuarine Pleistocene terrace deposits. On Day 2, we will see (stops 6-9) the classic Miocene section along the ~25 miles (~40 km) of Calvert Cliffs in Maryland, including a possible fault and structural warping. Cores from nearby test holes will also be shown to supplement outcrops.