Abstract
The Pine Mountain window is the most southern and internal Grenville basement massif in the Appalachian Mountain chain that retains its primary miogeoclinal stratigraphic cover. Previously metamorphosed billion-year-old granite gneisses have a modified stratigraphic contact with a younger metasedimentary sequence interpreted to correspond with either the upper Precambrian Ocoee Supergroup or Cambrian Weisner-Shady sequence of the Blue Ridge. Middle to upper amphibolite-facies assemblages in cover rocks sharply contrast with granulite-facies assemblages reported for basement units, which were retrograded to amphibolite-facies assemblages possibly as a result of thrust emplacement of the Inner Piedmont terrane during the middle to late Paleozoic. Late Paleozoic right-slip faulting, characterized by midcrustal-level mylonites with subvertical foliations and shallow NE-plunging elongation lineations, was pervasive throughout the basement/cover complex in Alabama and apparently overprinted earlier thrust zones. Right-slip faulting, possibly aided by ramping along lower, as yet unroofed thrusts, elevated the basement/cover contact to its present-day high structural level. It is unknown at present how far displaced the Pine Mountain window is from its original paleogeographic position along the ancient Laurentian margin.
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© 1992 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Steltenpohl, M.G. (1992). The Pine Mountain window of Alabama: Basement-cover evolution in the southernmost exposed Appalachians. In: Bartholomew, M.J., Hyndman, D.W., Mogk, D.W., Mason, R. (eds) Basement Tectonics 8. Proceedings of the International Conferences on Basement Tectonics, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-1614-5_33
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-1614-5_33
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