The Glarus Double Fold: a serious scientific advance in mid nineteenth century Alpine Geology

Abstract

The Glarus overthrust is one of the best known examples of a thrust fault. Prior to its explanation as the base of an overthrust mass, this anomaly of the stratigraphic column had been explained by the Double Fold model, two recumbent folds facing each other. This model, advocated by Arnold Escher and Albert Heim, has been discredited by later geologists as a tectonically unsound concept which retarded the progress of science in this field of research. This article challenges parts of this view and tries instead to demonstrate that the Double Fold concept, though obviously wrong in retrospect, was a considerable scientific advance compared to the situation around 1850 when it was first proposed. To this end, the article summarizes the development of Swiss Alpine geology between 1800 and 1850 and places the Double Fold into its proper historical context. Earlier tectonic models (mostly proposed by Bernhard Studer) viewed crystalline rocks as the main driver of Alpine orogeny: due to somewhat mysterious metamorphic processes these rocks were supposed to have changed their lithology and physical properties and ascended vertically through small fissures. They uplifted, folded and eventually overflowed their sedimentary cover. The Glarus overthrust was also explained in this manner, probably even by Arnold Escher until the late 1840s. He later changed his mind and proposed the Double Fold concept which can be considered as one of the earliest attempts to apply the global contraction theory to the Alps. The global contraction theory later became the base of the geotectonic model of Eduard Suess and contributed to the final acceptance of large-scale horizontal displacements of rock masses around 1900. From this perspective, the Double Fold can be considered as a first step towards the nappe tectonic revolution and we suggest that its proposal was the expression of a fundamentally new way of thinking in Alpine tectonics.