Structure along the eastern margin of the central Cordillera, upper Magdalena Valley, Colombia

Abstract

The eastern margin of the Central Cordillera in the Colombian Andes is bounded by a narrow, east-verging, middle Tertiary foreland fold and thrust belt. Serialized balanced cross-sections reveal that structures within this belt are characterized by en echelon basement-cored domes carried eastward on low-angle to moderately steeply dipping basement-rooted thrust faults. Foreland folding and thrusting migrated eastward through time, but ended by latest Oligocene and crustal deformation shifted eastward to the Eastern Cordillera and the Garzón Massif during the early Miocene through Pliocene. The style and configuration of the foreland structures along the eastern margin of the Central Cordillera appear to be controlled by a polygonal array of pre-existing mechanical anisotropies in the pre-Cretaceous basement. In the northern portion of the Chusma fault system, N/S-trending, moderately dipping, basement-rooted thrusts flatten upward into detachment surfaces within a thick Upper Cretaceous shale unit, carry broad basement-cored ramp anticlines on their hanging walls, and splay upward into the pre-Miocene sedimentary cover forming trailing imbricate fans. To the south, the same basement faults exhibit a different style as they steepen, jog sharply to a northeast trend, and cut directly up through the sedimentary cover without forming associated imbricate thrusts. This retro-arc thrust belt differs from other cordilleran deformed belts, such as the Canadian Rockies and Foothills, in that basement directly influenced deformation of the sedimentary cover. The interplay of Oligocene crustal shortening with pre-existing basement weaknesses created a transitional terrane that developed features of both thin-skinned thrust belts and thick-skinned Laramide-style crustal uplifts.