Abstract
Closely spaced stylolitic cleavage is developed in closures of folds in Lower Paleozoic carbonate rocks of the Great Valley, west of Hagerstown, Maryland. Stylolites which are perpendicular to bedding in beds of relatively competent microspar are refracted into a more penetrative cleavage in thin layers of less competent, dolomitic micrite. Cleavage refraction is a result of shear in the micrite layers which accommodated bedding slip between the more competent microspar beds by acting as Ramsay and Graham-type shear zones. The refracted cleavage is not normally parallel to the shear plane (bedding) but may approach parallelism in extremely thin shear zones. Refraction of cleavage between greywackes and slates of the overlying Martinsburg Formation, if due to the mechanism proposed for the carbonate rocks, is incompatible with a pre-lithification origin of the slaty cleavage.
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