The Cenozoic Denali Fault System and the Cretaceous accretionary development of southern Alaska

Abstract

The juxtaposition of disparate geologic terranes in southern Alaska has been previously interpreted to be mainly the result of several hundred kilometers of right lateral offset along the Denali fault system in Cenozoic time. Recent geologic investigations in the Healy quadrangle strongly suggest that Cenozoic horizontal displacements of such magnitude along the Denali fault system do not exist. In the Healy quadrangle, isograds and metamorphic facies boundaries of an early Late Cretaceous metamorphic belt trend across the Cenozoic McKinley strand of the Denali system without significant horizontal offsets. The present geologic makeup of most of southern Alaska is primarily the result of the Talkeetna superterrane, consisting of the previously assembled Peninsular terrane and Wrangellia, colliding with and subsequently being thrust upon the Yukon‐Tanana and Nixon Fork terranes of the ancient North American continent in about middle Cretaceous time. The leading edge of the Talkeetna superterrane faces a wide, complexly deformed zone that contains numerous northwestward thrust miniterranes tectonically intermixed with Jurassic and Cretaceous flysch. The flysch is interpreted to have been deposited mostly in the narrowing and subsequently collapsed oceanic basin between the converging continental blocks. The postcollisional Denali fault system developed in Cenozoic time across the already accreted continental margin, in eastern Alaska along an older, Cretaceous suture.