Geometry, evolution, and tectonic framework of the Skeena Fold Belt, north central British Columbia

Abstract

The Intermontane Belt of the Canadian Cordillera has long been viewed as a passive, relatively rigid block between two metamorphic‐plutonic belts, the Coast Plutonic Complex and the Omineca Belt. However, the Skeena Fold Belt, which spans most of the width of the northern Intermontane Belt, exhibits shortening comparable with that in the Rocky Mountain Fold and Thrust Belt. The Skeena Fold Belt has many features of thin‐skinned fold and thrust belts, such as thrust faults which sole into a detachment, a wide variety of structural styles which depend on rock type, a foreland basin which was cannibalized by continued deformation, a frontal triangle zone, and a hinterland of metamorphic and plutonic rocks (Coast Plutonic Complex). The Skeena Fold Belt thus is comparable with the Rocky Mountain Fold and Thrust Belt, but rather than deforming a continental terrace wedge, it developed in a terrane (Stikinia) which had accreted to North America in the early Mesozoic, and in Jurassic and Cretaceous clastic successions (Bowser Lake and Sustut groups) which overlie Stikinia. Structural and stratigraphic relationships show that the earliest deformation occurred between Oxfordian and Albian time and that the last folds developed in latest Cretaceous or early Tertiary time. As much as 160 km of northeastward shortening in the Skeena Fold Belt was broadly contemporaneous with crustal thickening in the Coast Plutonic Complex and Omineca Belt, with dextral strike‐slip faulting east of the Skeena Fold Belt, and with shortening in the Rocky Mountain Fold and Thrust Belt. Therefore, between latest Jurassic and early Tertiary times, horizontal shortening occured across most of the width of the northern Canadian Cordillera. Concurrent shortening across the Cordillera suggests that a common detachment (or detachments) fed all of these zones as far east as the Rocky Mountain Fold and Thrust Belt.