The Mid-Atlantic Shore to the Appalachian Highlands: Field Trip Guidebook for the 2010 Joint Meeting of the Northeastern and Southeastern GSA Sections
This guidebook features field trips offered during the joint meeting of GSA’s Northeastern and Southeastern Sections held in Baltimore, Maryland, in March 2010. Chapters in this guide reflect the meeting’s theme (“Linking North and South: Exploring the Connections between Continent and Sea”) in that they span the lowlands of eastern Pennsylvania to the highlands of northeastern West Virginia. Four physiographic provinces are covered: Piedmont (Piedmont Upland and Gettysburg-Newark Lowland Sections), Blue Ridge, Valley and Ridge, and Appalachian Plateau. The geologic foci are likewise variable, ranging from Precambrian basement rocks to Pleistocene sediments.
Magmatic layering and intrusive plumbing in the Jurassic Morgantown Sheet, Central Atlantic Magmatic Province
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Published:January 01, 2010
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CiteCitation
LeeAnn Srogi, Tim Lutz, Loretta D. Dickson, Meagen Pollock, Kirby Gimson, Nicole Lynde, 2010. "Magmatic layering and intrusive plumbing in the Jurassic Morgantown Sheet, Central Atlantic Magmatic Province", The Mid-Atlantic Shore to the Appalachian Highlands: Field Trip Guidebook for the 2010 Joint Meeting of the Northeastern and Southeastern GSA Sections, Gary M. Fleeger, Steven J. Whitmeyer
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Abstract
This field trip explores igneous layering in the Morgantown Sheet, southeastern Pennsylvania, a Jurassic diabase intrusion that is part of the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province, formed during rifting of Pangea. The Pennsylvania Granite Quarry (Stop 1) is a dimension stone quarry in the southern side of the sheet, in which the cut walls display intermittent modal layering crosscut by channels of mafic diabase. Plagioclase-rich layers overlie pyroxene-rich layers in packages with slightly concave-up “wok” shapes ~ 0.3–0.4 m in dimension and ~ 0.35–0.5 m thick. Mafic diabase — both layers and crosscutting channels—contain 15–25 modal percent orthopyroxene phenocrysts and are interpreted as basaltic magma replenishments. Orientations of layering and channels suggest this part of the sheet was originally a horizontal sill ~ 400 m thick, at about six kilometers depth, and that the sheet was tilted 20° – 25° to the north after crystallization. The Dyer aggregate quarry (Stop 2) is in the northeast side of the sheet that dips ~ 80° southeast (Birdsboro dike). Here, rhythmic plagioclase-pyroxene layering also dipping ~ 80° is found in the interior and near the margin of the ~ 255-m-wide dike. Augite and plagioclase compositions are very similar in samples from different vertical heights in the sheet, suggesting localized rather than sheet-wide fractionation. We compare the Morgantown Sheet layering to similar features in the Palisades sill, New Jersey, and Basement sill, Antarctica, and discuss models for their formation.
- Appalachians
- Berks County Pennsylvania
- Central Atlantic magmatic province
- Chester County Pennsylvania
- diabase
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- igneous rocks
- intrusions
- Jurassic
- layered intrusions
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- Mesozoic
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- North America
- Pangaea
- Pennsylvania
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- plutonic rocks
- quarries
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- United States
- southeastern Pennsylvania
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- Morgantown Intrusion
- Elverson Pennsylvania