Duplex structures in the lewis thrust sheet, crowsnest pass, rocky mountains, Alberta, Canada

Abstract

The Lewis thrust sheet of the southern Canadian Rocky Mountains contains many spectacular examples of small-scale duplex structures. This paper presents the results of a detailed analysis of such structures found in the Mississippian carbonates of the Banff Formation at Crowsnest Pass, southwestern Alberta. Foreland dipping, hinterland dipping and antiformal stacked duplexes are found in the hangingwall of the Lewis thrust. Out-of-sequence thrusts, back thrusts and folds that push out of the plane of the cross-section, termed lateral lobes, give rise to complex internal geometries. Dominant slip vectors are towards 080–090° but the complex fault geometries have generated significant variations in slip away from this direction. The duplex structures occur as discrete thrust fault-bounded packages with each package having different slip vectors. The panels above and below the duplex structures show consistent slip vectors towards 080–090° whereas the duplexes exhibit a wide scatter of slip vectors from 350–160°. The stacking of duplexes with many horses can be likened to the stacking of many inverted soup bowls, herein termed turtle back structures, and will involve a wide scatter of slip directions, particularly if the horses are of limited lateral extent. Such a stacking mechanism involving out-of-section movement invalidates the assumption of two-dimensional plane strain in the plane of the cross-section that contains the regional tectonic transport direction. Correctly balanced cross-sections cannot be constructed through such stacked duplex structures as described in this paper.