Setting and occurrence of Late Paleozoic radiolarians in the Sylvester allochthon, part of a proto-Pacific ocean floor terrane in the Canadian Cordillera

Abstract

Late Paleozoic radiolarians have been used to establish th allochthon of the Slide Mountain terrane in British Columbia, and have thereby greatly clarified the geology and tectonic history of the terrane. As the Sylvester radiolarian fauna is limited, age assignments were based on a few distinctive and diagnostic robust forms. Radiolarians occur in cherts from a wide variety of different oceanic sequences that are structurally juxtaposed within the Sylvester allochthon. Like others in a suite of correlative terranes that lie along the length of the Cordillera, the Sylvester allochthon and the radiolarian bearing cherts in it derive from the telescoping together of slices from what was, in the late Paleozoic, a large area of the proto-Pacific ocean.