The South Pyrenean triangle zone represents the southernmost front of the Pyrenees at its central portion deforming the Upper Eocene‐Miocene Ebro Basin deposits. Two main structures characterize its western termination, the Barbastro anticline and the San Román backthrust, which detached on the Barbastro Formation (and lateral equivalents), an Upper Eocene‐Lower Oligocene syntectonic evaporite‐rich formation that acted as a multidetachment unit. Northward, the south directed Pyrenean thrust unit (i.e., Gavarnie‐Sierras thrust sheet) detached along the Middle‐Upper Triassic evaporitic rocks to finally ramp up and glide along the same Upper Eocene‐Lower Oligocene multidetachment unit. A multidisciplinary approach allowed constructing a detailed structural and stratigraphic model of the study area. The workflow consisted of (1) constraining the geometry and structural architecture based on surface geology, interpretation of seismic lines (>900 km), and wells and (2) obtaining the 3‐D density distribution of the multidetachment unit using gravity stochastic inversion (more than 7,000 gravity stations and 1,500 density data). The geometry of the sole thrust of the Gavarnie‐Sierras thrust sheet was controlled by the distribution of the evaporite‐rich units of the Barbastro Fm. Weak detachments promoted thrust salient formation and thrust flat geometries. The western termination of the South Pyrenean triangle zone is defined as a westward transition from a ramp‐dominated and multiple triangle zone to a detachment‐dominated one. Its geometry, kinematics, and location were controlled by the heterogeneous lithology of the Barbastro Fm. and its basal, halite‐based detachment southern pinch‐out.
The Small Circle (SC) methods are founded upon two main starting hypotheses: (i) the analyzed sites were remagnetized contemporarily, acquiring the same paleomagnetic direction. (ii) The deviation of the acquired paleomagnetic signal from its original direction is only due to tilting around the bedding strike and therefore the remagnetization direction must be located on a small circle (SC) whose axis is the strike of bedding and contains the in situ paleomagnetic direction. Therefore, if we analyze several sites (with different bedding strikes) their SCs will intersect in the remagnetization direction. The SC methods have two applications: (1) the Small Circle Intersection (SCI) method is capable of providing adequate approximations to the expected paleomagnetic direction when dealing with synfolding remagnetizations. By comparing the SCI direction with that predicted from an apparent polar wander path, the (re)magnetization can be dated. (2) Once the remagnetization direction is known, the attitude of the beds (at each site) can be restored to the moment of the acquisition of the remagnetization, showing a palinspastic reconstructuion of the structure. Some caveats are necessary under more complex tectonic scenarios, in which SC-based methods can lead to erroneous interpretations. However, the graphical output of the methods tries to avoid 'black-box' effects and can minimize misleading interpretations or even help, for example, to identify local or regional vertical axis rotations. In any case, the methods must be used with caution and always considering the knowledge of the tectonic frame. In this paper, some utilities for SCs analysis are automatized by means of a new Python code and a new technique for defining the uncertainty of the solution is proposed. With pySCu the SCs methods can be easily and quickly applied, obtaining firstly a set of text files containing all calculated information and subsequently generating a graphical output on the fly.
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