Pervasive late Paleozoic–Triassic remagnetization of miogeoclinal carbonate rocks in the Basin and Range and vicinity, SW USA: regional results and possible tectonic implications

Abstract

Relatively unmetamorphosed Paleozoic miogeoclinal carbonate rocks in the Basin and Range of E Nevada, SW Nevada and adjacent California, and W Utah yield low-inclination magnetizations that reflect pervasive, regional remagnetization around the close of the Paleozoic. The rocks range in age from mid-Cambrian through Pennsylvanian and lie generally in a broad belt between the mid-Paleozoic Roberts Mountain Thrust and the late Cretaceous Sevier thrusts. Most of the magnetizations reside in magnetite, but at one site the magnetization is evidently carried by pyrrhotite. Preliminary rock-magnetic data suggest samples with magnetite-borne remanences have wasp-waisted hysteresis curves typical of remagnetized carbonates. The origin of the remagnetization is problematic and probably polygenetic: both the Permo-Triassic Sonoma orogeny and deformation associated with the Ancestral Rockies seem too spatially limited, but magnetite from smectite destruction seems difficult to reconcile with the great stratigraphic extent of late Paleozoic remagnetization unless combined with thermal resetting of the lowermost units. A number of sites also appear to have undergone some vertical-axis rotation, and the sense and magnitude of these rotations are grossly consistent with independent geologic evidence. However, the probably large age range of the low-inclination components complicates their use for resolving tectonic rotations. Younger, intermediate-stability components of magnetization, probably of Cretaceous or Cenozoic age, are also found in many sites and also probably have multiple origins. At sites farther W, the late Paleozoic component is not found, which probably reflects its destruction by later Mesozoic or Cenozoic heating. At sites farther E, on and near the Colorado Plateau, gray carbonates yield only Cenozoic magnetizations. Some reddish, oxidized carbonates there locally contain a hematite-borne magnetization of late Paleozoic age. However, it is probably related to the development of thick continental redbed sequences in overlying strata on the plateau rather than to the remagnetization process(es) in the miogeocline.