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Structural Geology of the Southern Sheeprock Mountains, Utah: Regional Significance

Christie-Blick, Nicholas

The Sheeprock Mountains are part of a horst of Proterozoic, Paleozoic and Cenozoic sedimentary and igneous rocks located in the transitional region between the Cordilleran fold-thrust belt and the hinterland in the Basin-Range province of west-central Utah.
Prominent structural elements in the Sheeprock Mountains are the Sheeprock Thrust, juxtaposing Proterozoic rocks above Paleozoic ones with a stratigraphic separation exceeding 10 km; the Pole Canyon Thrust, thought to be an upper plate imbrication of the Sheeprock Thrust; the Pole Canyon Anticline, a recumbent fold vergent to the northeast and cut by the Pole Canyon Thrust; the east-northeast-striking Indian Springs (tear) Fault; and two low-angle normal faults (the Harker and Lion Hill Faults) which together account for stratigraphic omission of several kilometres.
The Pole Canyon Anticline is thought to have developed in the late Mesozoic during propagation of the thrusts parallel to the Indian Springs Fault, and this transport direction is corroborated by minor structures. Fault geometry suggests that the Harker and Lion Hill Faults are younger than the thrusts and probably of late Cenozoic age, although some mid-Cenozoic or even earlier displacement cannot be entirely ruled out.
My [The author's] preferred interpretation of the structural history of the Sheep rock Mountains is consistent with minimal regional extension before the mid-Cenozoic and with the view that crustal shortening in the fold-thrust belt is for the most part unrelated to hinterland extension.

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Geological Society of America Memoir : Tectonic and Stratigraphic Studies in the Eastern Great Basin

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