Subsurface Structure of the Eastern Arkoma Basin (1)

Abstract

Analysis of 425 km of seismic reflection data in the eastern Arkoma basin reveals a structure and history quite different from those previously reported for the Arkoma basin. The eastern Arkoma basin has three structural styles that formed in the following chronological order: deep, steep normal faults; shallow listric normal faults; and thrust faults. The origin of the structural styles and the Paleozoic history of the eastern Arkoma basin may be summarized as follows. Late Proterozoic or Early Cambrian rifting was followed by deposition of Cambrian through Upper Mississippian strata on a passive plate margin. The Mississippian-Pennsylvanian boundary marks a time of major down-to-the-south normal faulting with coincident folding of the footwall blocks and truncation of t e faulted and folded terrain by a pre-Morrowan (Mississippian-Pennsylvanian) unconformity. The unconformity slopes southward and steepens locally across the erosionally truncated footwall blocks. During the Pennsylvanian, down-to-the-south listric normal faults cut the Atokan and Morrowan sections and merged with, but did not displace, the steeper segments of the sub-Morrowan unconformity. Surface folds north of the Ross Creek thrust are rollover anticlines overlying these listric normal faults. Major deformation in the eastern Arkoma basin terminated with emplacement of the Ross Creek thrust in the Late Pennsylvanian.