Abstract
A traverse across the Stone Church syncline in the Ordovician Martinsburg turbidites reveals an axial planar cleavage (N40°E, SE dips) in regional thrust-related folds (N40°E, shallow plunges) and five phases of sparry calcite. Calcite fillings are bedding-parallel, cleavage-parallel, and one vein set cross-cuts both earlier phases; the youngest calcite filling is a bedding-parallel fault gouge that crosscuts the cleavage and preserves top-down-to-the-southeast normal fault kinematics. Calcite veins unique to disharmonically-folded calcareous siltstones (Maxwell, 1962) were also analyzed. Stable isotopic analysis (O, C) of all of the calcite phases indicates a uniform fluid source (δ13C −2.0, δ18O −13.3 VPDB) and, potentially, a similar precipitation and mechanical twinning age. The twinning strains (n = 1341; average Δσ = −32 MPa; average ε1 = −2.9%) in the calcite suite are consistent with SE-NW thrust shortening, and sub-horizontal shortening perpendicular to evolving axial planar cleavage planes in the Stone Church syncline. Calcareous siltstone layers within the Martinsburg Fm. turbidites share concordant bedding planes and are unique, chemically (XRF), but folded and cleaved differently than the surrounding clay-rich Martinsburg turbidites. Neither sediment type yielded detrital zircons. Electron backscatter X-ray diffraction (EBSD) and calcite twinning results in a folded calcareous siltstone layer preserving a layer-normal SE-NW shortening strain and Lattice Preferred Orientation (LPO). Shortening axes for the five-phase calcite suite trends ~N40°W, consistent with tectonic transport associated with crystalline nappe emplacement of the Reading Prong within the Piedmont province.
Highlights
Since Chapple [1] first unraveled the order and dynamics of shortening in a thin-skinned fold-and-thrust belt, using the Appalachian Mountains as a model, later workers have made enormous headway in understanding the deformational style in the Valley and Ridge and foreland provinces
Geosciences 2016, 6, 10 and cleaved Ordovician Martinsburg Fm. in the Stone Church syncline provide a field site to evaluate the stress-strain relations that existed during the evolution of this fold and its axial planar cleavage and add the twinned calcite results to the existing literature on deformation and strain partitioning at this classic Piedmont province locale [4,5,6,7]
How does this strain fabric correlate with other indicators of tectonic shortening across the Appalachian orogenic belt and did the collisional orogeny involve significant thrust sheet rotation during shortening [8,9,10]?
Summary
Since Chapple [1] first unraveled the order and dynamics of shortening in a thin-skinned fold-and-thrust belt, using the Appalachian Mountains as a model, later workers have made enormous headway in understanding the deformational style in the Valley and Ridge (thin-skinned thrust belt) and foreland provinces. Geosciences 2016, 6, 10 and cleaved Ordovician Martinsburg Fm. in the Stone Church syncline provide a field site to evaluate the stress-strain relations that existed during the evolution of this fold and its axial planar cleavage and add the twinned calcite results to the existing literature on deformation and strain partitioning at this classic Piedmont province locale [4,5,6,7] How does this strain fabric correlate with other indicators of tectonic shortening across the Appalachian orogenic belt and did the collisional orogeny involve significant thrust sheet rotation during shortening [8,9,10]?. We have compared the bulk geochemistry of the Martinsburg Fm. host and a calcareous siltstone (XRF), the stable isotope (O, C), and calcite twinning strain characteristics of each calcite phase in a section of folded Martinsburg
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