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.
Late Paleozoic deformation in central and southern Nevada
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Published:January 01, 2008
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CiteCitation
Pat Cashman, Jim Trexler, Walt Snyder, Vladimir Davydov, Wanda Taylor, 2008. "Late Paleozoic deformation in central and southern Nevada", 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
In central Nevada, a series of angular unconformities records protracted orogenic activity between middle Mississippian and late Permian time. These unconformities are regional, and can be correlated with lithofacies boundaries at their distal edges. Both the unconformities and the tectonically created sedimentary basins they bound are best expressed in a north-south belt of localities from Winnemucca south to the Las Vegas area.
This paper briefly describes seven localities where rocks display both structural and stratigraphic features related to one or more of these unconformities and their related tectonic events. At Edna Mountain, the record is both stratigraphic and structural, and is mostly from the Pennsylvanian. At Carlin Canyon, we will look at both Mississippian and Pennsylvanian folding, thrusting, and unconformities. In the Diamond Range, we will see evidence that Pennsylvanian folding is regionally important. At Secret Canyon, the record is mostly of Permian deformation and sedimentation. In the Hot Creek Range, we will see southern versions of Mississippian stratigraphy, and thrusting that is late Paleozoic in age. In the Timpahute Mountains, complex faulting is also believed to be late Paleozoic.
- angular unconformities
- Basin and Range Province
- Eureka County Nevada
- faults
- field trips
- guidebook
- Humboldt County Nevada
- lithofacies
- lithostratigraphy
- Nevada
- North America
- Nye County Nevada
- orogeny
- Paleozoic
- road log
- sedimentary rocks
- tectonic elements
- tectonics
- tectonostratigraphic units
- thrust faults
- unconformities
- United States
- upper Paleozoic
- southern Nevada
- central Nevada