Documenting Late Proterozoic Rifting in the Ocoee Basin, Western Blue Ridge, North Carolina
Montes C and Hatcher RD. 1999. Documenting Late Proterozoic Rifting in the Ocoee Basin, Western Blue Ridge, North Carolina. Southeastern Geology. 39(1):37-50
Detailed geologic mapping in the western Blue Ridge of western North Carolina indicates that the Snowbird Group-Great Smoky Group contact is the premetamorphic Greenbrier fault. Redefinition of this contact confines the entire Snowbird Group to the footwall of the Greenbrier fault. Reinterpretation of this boundary demands an alternative explanation for large thickness changes of Snowbird strata (from more than 1,000 m to less than 200 m) in the Cataloochee Divide area previously explained by telescoping along the Greenbrier fault. A northeast –trending, northwest-dipping normal fault active during the accumulation of the Longarm Quartzite also explains these changes, and agrees well with the tectonic setting of the Ocoee supergroup along the extending Late Proterozoic rifted margin of Laurentia. This fault limited the eastward extent of the Ocoee basin, and probably hindered west-to-east sediment dispersal along the rifted margin of Laurentia.
- Type
- Journal Article
- Authors
- Montes, Camilo; Hatcher, Robert
- Units
- GRSM
- Keywords
- Cataloochee Divide, Geology, Geomorphology, Greenbrier Fault, GRSM-00958, Smoky Mountain Group, Snowbird Group