Mesozoic basin formation, mass-gravity sedimentation, and inversion in northeastern Sonora and southeastern Arizona

Abstract

The El Tule fault extends southeastward from the Huachuca Mountains area of Arizona to run along the base of the Sierra San José in northern Sonora. This fault, with the Jurassic and Cretaceous strata that lie on either side of it, helps to link the geologic histories of the Sierra San José, the Huachuca Mountains, and the Mule Mountains. This fault was active during the Jurassic and formed part of the southern and southwestern limit of a small Jurassic basin that accumulated Glance Conglomerate and contains the type locality of that unit; it was also active during the time of deposition of the upper part of the Bisbee Group, i.e., the Morita, Mural, and Cintura formations. This fault is an important marker for the northern margin of the Cananea high.Three evidences suggest that a genetic distinction should be made between the basin that collected the Glance Conglomerate and the younger, wider, superposing basin that collected upper Bisbee rocks: (1) There was a depositional pause after active deposition of the Glance (and therefore after active opening of the Glance basin). (2) The subsequent, fi ner-grained upper Bisbee deposits do not extend entirely over the Cananea high, but are otherwise regional in extent, forming a thick blanket over the inactive fault basin and other similar basins elsewhere in the region. (3) The axial trends of the Jurassic fault basin(s) and the upper Bisbee basin do not coincide.We offer the hypothesis that the Jurassic fault basins were caused by the same crustal stresses that caused the Mojave-Sonora megashear (their ages of activity and orientations are similar), and that the upper Bisbee basin was the probable result of crustal thinning associated with formation of the extensional Jurassic basins, and of eustasy. We offer this in contrast to the current hypothesis that the Bisbee basin is a rift basin, that is, the product of a single, ongoing Mesozoic process.Large-scale mass-gravity deposits are signal features both of the Jurassic fault basin (a result of crustal extension) and of the overlying local Laramide basin (which McKee, J.W., McKee, M.B., and Anderson, T.H., 2005, Mesozoic basin formation, mass-gravity sedimentation, and inversion in northeastern Sonora and southeastern Arizona, in Anderson, T.

Stratigraphy and age of Upper Jurassic strata in north-central Sonora, Mexico: Southwestern Laurentian record of crustal extension and tectonic transition

“…These and correlative strata to the south (Lyons, 2008) represent a northwest-trending arm of the Mar Mexicano termed the Arivechi-Cucurpe seaway, which lay roughly parallel to, but west of, the Chihuahua trough in central Chihuahua (Haenggi and Muehlbuerger, 2005;McKee et al, 2005). A Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous bathymetric high known as the Aldama platform (Haenggi, 2002) separated these Late Jurassic marine depocenters and was likely contiguous with the Cananea high along the Sonora-Arizona boundary (McKee and .…”

“…1), a region characterized by its general lack of exposed autochthonous Proterozoic-Paleozoic rocks . Post-Glance Early Cretaceous deposition in the Bisbee Basin records post-extensional thermotectonic subsidence (Dickinson et al, 1989;McKee et al, 2005).…”

“…1) (e.g., McKee et al, 2005;Rodríguez-Castañeda, 1997. The allochthonous interpretation regards black shale facies of the Mural as deep-marine deposits that form a matrix encasing biostromal blocks shed from the Cananea high and small-scale folds within the Lower Cretaceous section as likewise indica tive of mass-wasting processes.…”

Mesozoic gliding and Tertiary basin and range tectonics in eastern Sonora, Mexico

“…Megaclasts (monoliths and blocks) as described by Blair and McPherson (1999), have been found and are common in eastern Sonora Upper Cretaceous sequences (McKee and Anderson, 1998;Rodríguez-Castañeda, 2002;and McKee et al 2005). These megaclasts have been linked to the emergence of a positive land, possibly related to the Late Jurassic Aldama Platform (Ramirez and Acevedo, 1957;Monreal, 1996;Haenggi, 2002;Anderson and Nourse, 2005) (Figure 2).…”

“…Megaclasts are associated to gravity sliding, or to vertical movements as described by various authors as olistoliths and olistostromes (Teale and Young, 1987;Heubeck, 1992). Megaclasts have also been reported from numerous other tectonic environments; the Pyrenées (Johns et al, 1981), the Canadian Rockies (Cook et al, 1972), eastern Australia (Conaghan et al, 1976), the western US Cordillera (Heck and Speed 1987), the Apennines (Naylor, 1982;Teale and Young, 1987), the Avalonían Terrane of New England (Bailey et al, 1989), Hispaniola (Heubeck, 1992), global recent continental slopes (Prior et al, 1982), Alaska (Harp et al, 2003), the Valles-San Luis Potosi Platform (CarrascoVelázquez., 1977), and north-eastern Sonora (McKee and Anderson, 1998;McKee et al, 2005).…”