Structural Studies in the Whipple Mountains, Southeastern California

[摘要] The rocks of the Whipple Mountains include a basement complex of pre-Cambrian age overlain by middle Tertiary volcanics and sedimentary. These are unconformably overlain by flat-lying Pleistocene and recent beds. The broad structural feature of the mountains is a faulted dome, elongated roughly east-west. The dome is out lined on the north and northeast flanks by an arcuate fault which dips away from the mountains. The northeast area of the mountains is broken into southwest-tilted blocks, bounded by northeast-dipping normal faults, roughly parallel tothe southeast-trending portion of the arcuate fault.The block faulting is not of the orthodox basin rangetype, but is considered to be closely associated withthe doming. There is no evidence of large compressionalforces, and these mountains are believed to belong tothe belt of transverse ranges of southern California.The major faults are presumed to have been active inpost and pre-Miocene times. There is no evidence ofrecent fault activity and volcanics and sediments presumablyof Quaternary age are not cut by the faults.

[发布机构] University:California Institute of Technology;Department:Geological and Planetary Sciences

[关键词] Geology