Mesozoic fault systems, deformation and fault block rotation in the Andean forearc: a crustal scale strike-slip duplex in the Coastal Cordillera of northern Chile

Abstract

In this paper we discuss the evolution and tectonic significance of the Mesozoic trench-parallel fault systems which affected the Coastal Cordillera and their relation to magmatism and crustal rotation. The oldest, extensional, fault system separates basement from rift-related Late Triassic and younger sedimentary units. This system [I] subsequently developed into a wider extensional fault system which acted as the locus of magma ascent and emplacement of the Coastal Batholith during much of the Jurassic to earliest Cretaceous period. This extensional fault system defined the forearc sliver during this period and was the consequence of a retreating subduction boundary. During the Early Cretaceous (c. 132–125 Ma) the kinematics of this fault system changed to transtension [II] and accommodated a major component of left-lateral strike-slip motion, the principal fault being the Atacama Fault Zone along which plutons continued to be emplaced. The final phase of pluton emplacement within the Coastal Cordillera appears to be c. 106 Ma, after which this magmatic arc and fault system was abandoned. An Late Cretaceous arc and fault system [III] developed some 20 Ma later and located some 50 km to the east in what is now the Central Valley of northern Chile. This paper seeks to show that the Coastal Cordillera was deformed as a whole by this Late Cretaceous fault system [III] which formed a crustal-scale left-lateral transpressional duplex. During this deformation the thermally weakened crust was dissected into a series of large-scale blocks bounded by NW-trending left-lateral strike-slip faults which merge into a NNE–SSW fault zone which forms the eastern boundary to the duplex. We term this eastern boundary zone the Central Valley Fault Zone (CVFZ) and this together with the NW-trending faults defines the duplex system which we refer to as a whole as the Coastal Cordillera Fault System (CCFS) [III]. We have traced the CCFS duplex between 25°S and 29°S and suspect that it continues northward. The timing of the deformation is constrained to be post 106 Ma, the age of Coastal Cordillera arc abandonment, and pre-Tertiary based on the deformation and pluton emplacement in and along the Central Valley Fault Zone. Palaeomagnetic data from the fault bound blocks within the CCFS duplex indicate 35°–45° of post-Early Cretaceous clockwise rotation with no substantial latitudinal motion. We suggest that the observed fault kinematics of the CCFS are consistent with this crustal-scale duplex model where rotations would have occurred in response to left-lateral transpression.