Field Guide to Plutons, Volcanoes, Faults, Reefs, Dinosaurs, and Possible Glaciation in Selected Areas of Arizona, California, and Nevada

This guidebook, prepared in conjunction with the 2008 joint meeting of the GSA Cordilleran and Rocky Mountain Sections, contains background information and road logs for eleven field trips in Nevada, Arizona, and California. Southern Nevada and adjoining areas contain a rich geologic history spanning the interval from the Paleoproterozoic to the present. Las Vegas lies at or near several critical geological junctures and localities including the structural boundary between the Colorado Plateau and Basin and Range, the physiographic boundary between the Great Basin and the southern Basin and Range, the eastern margin of the Sevier fold-and-thrust belt, the tectonically active Death Valley area, tilted and faulted volcanic-plutonic systems exposing the upper part of the crust, and the enigmatic “amagmatic zone.” With guides in this volume spanning the geologic record from the Ediacaran (late Neoproterozoic) to the Holocene, covering ground from the middle crust to the surface, and looking at topics from tectonics to paleontology, volcanism to glaciation, this volume offers something for everyone.
Magmatism and tectonics in a tilted crustal section through a continental arc, eastern Transverse Ranges and southern Mojave Desert
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Published:January 01, 2008
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CiteCitation
Andrew P. Barth, J. Lawford Anderson, Carl E. Jacobson, Scott R. Paterson, Joseph L. Wooden, 2008. "Magmatism and tectonics in a tilted crustal section through a continental arc, eastern Transverse Ranges and southern Mojave Desert", Field Guide to Plutons, Volcanoes, Faults, Reefs, Dinosaurs, and Possible Glaciation in Selected Areas of Arizona, California, and Nevada, Ernest M. Duebendorfer, Eugene I. Smith
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Abstract
This field guide describes a two-and-one-half day transect, from east to west across southern California, from the Colorado River to the San Andreas fault. Recent geochronologic results for rocks along the transect indicate the spatial and temporal relationships between subarc and retroarc shortening and Cordilleran arc magmatism. The transect begins in the Jurassic(?) and Cretaceous Maria retroarc fold-and-thrust belt, and continues westward and structurally downward into the Triassic to Cretaceous magmatic arc. At the deepest structural levels exposed in the southwestern part of the transect, the lower crust of the Mesozoic arc has been replaced during underthrusting by the Maastrichtian and/or Paleocene Orocopia schist.
- Arizona
- Basin and Range Province
- California
- Cordilleran Orogeny
- crust
- crustal shortening
- faults
- field trips
- fold and thrust belts
- guidebook
- igneous rocks
- Imperial County California
- Laramide Orogeny
- magmatism
- Mesozoic
- metamorphic rocks
- Mojave Desert
- North America
- Orocopia Schist
- plutonic rocks
- Riverside County California
- road log
- tectonics
- Transverse Ranges
- underthrust faults
- United States
- Yuma County Arizona
- Orocopia Mountains