Low-angle normal faults in the south-central Brooks Range fold and thrust belt, Alaska

Abstract

A north-south structural transect through the south-central Brooks Range, Alaska, exposes three lithologically distinct, fault-bounded packages of rock, all regionally metamorphosed during the Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous contractional deformation that formed much of the Brooks Range fold and thrust belt. These are, from south to north and structurally highest to lowest, (1) the prehnite-pumpellyite facies ophiolitic rocks of the Angayucham terrane, (2) the low-grade metasedimentary rocks of the Rosie Creek allochthon, and (3) pumpellyite-actinolite to glaucophane-epidote facies metamorphic rocks of the schist belt. The presence of rocks metamorphosed and deformed at shallow levels of the fold and thrust belt (the Angayucham terrane and Rosie Creek allochthon) lying structurally above rocks representing the deepest exposed levels of the fold and thrust belt (the schist belt) indicates that the imbricate stack is disrupted by south-dipping, low-angle normal faults along the southern margin of the Brooks Range. We propose that normal faults developed in response to the uplift of the schist belt and the overlying metasedimentary and ophiolitic allochthons by northdirected thrusting in the late Early Cretaceous. Thrusting resulted in the oversteepening of the imbricate stack, causing compensatory normal faulting along the southern flank of the ramp structure. Normal faults may have provided at least local structural control of the locus of Albian and younger sedimentation in the Koyukuk basin.