Oxygen isotope ratios of zircon (Zc) from intrusives exposed in the Tehachapi Mountains, southern California, reveal large inputs of high-
δ
18O supracrustal contaminant into gabbroic and tonalitic ...magmas deep (>
30 km) in the Cretaceous Sierra Nevada batholith. High
δ
18O(Zc) values (7.8
±
0.7‰) predominate in the deep parts of the batholith, but lower values (6.1
±
0.9‰) occur in shallower parts. This indicates a larger gradient in
δ
18O with depth in the batholith than occurs from west to east across it. Oxygen, Sr, and Nd isotope data show that the supracrustal contaminant was likely young (Paleozoic or Mesozoic), hydrothermally altered upper oceanic crust or volcanic arc sediments. Such rocks were subducted or underthrust beneath the Sierran arc during accretion of oceanic terranes onto North America. This component yielded high-
δ
18O magmas that were added to the base of the batholith. On average, gabbros in the southern Sierra contain at least 18% of the subducted supracrustal component. Some tonalite and granodiorite magmas were additionally contaminated by Kings Sequence metasedimentary rocks, as evidenced by
δ
18O(Zc) and initial
87Sr/
86Sr that trend toward values measured for the Kings Sequence. Besides high
δ
18O values in the southern Sierra, xenoliths in the central Sierra also have elevated
δ
18O, which confirms the widespread abundance of supracrustal material in the sub-arc lithospheric mantle. In contrast to
δ
18O(Zc), whole rock
δ
18O values of many samples have undergone post-magmatic alteration that obscures the magmatic contamination history of those rocks. Such alteration previously prevented confident determination of the mass of young, hydrothermally altered mantle rocks that contributed to Sierran granitoids.
Geobarometric studies have documented that most of the metasedimentary wall rocks and plutons presently exposed in the southernmost Sierra Nevada batholith south of the Lake Isabella area were ...metamorphosed and emplaced at crustal levels significantly deeper (∼15 to 30 km) than the batholithic rocks exposed to the north (depths of ∼3 to 15 km). Field and geophysical studies have suggested that much of the southernmost part of the batholith is underlain along low-angle faults by the Rand Schist. The schist is composed mostly of metagraywacke that has been metamorphosed at relatively high pressures and moderate temperatures. NNW-trending compositional, age, and isotopic boundaries in the plutonic rocks of the central Sierra Nevada appear to be deflected westward in the southernmost part of the batholith. Based on these observations, in conjunction with the implicit assumption that the Sierra Nevada batholith formerly continued unbroken south of the Garlock fault, previous studies have inferred that the batholith was tectonically disrupted following its emplacement during the Cretaceous. Hypotheses to account for this disruption include intraplate oroctinal bending, W-vergent overthrusting, and gravitational collapse of overthickened crust. In this paper, new geologic data from the eastern Tehachapi Mountains, located adjacent to and north of the Garlock fault in the southernmost Sierra Nevada, are integrated with data from previous geologic studies in the region into a new view of the Late Cretaceous-Paleocene tectonic evolution of the region. The thesis of this paper is that part of the southernmost Sierra Nevada batholith was unroofed by extensional faulting in Late Cretaceous-Paleocene time. Unroofing occurred along a regional system of low-angle detachment faults. Remnants of the upper-plate rocks today are scattered across the southern Sierra Nevada region, from the Rand Mountains west to the San Emigdio Mountains, and across the San Andreas fault to the northern Salinian block.
Batholithic rocks in the upper plates of the Blackburn Canyon fault of the eastern Tehachapi Mountains, low-angle faults in the Rand Mountains and southeastern Sierra Nevada, and the Pastoria fault of the western Tehachapi Mountains are inferred to have been removed from a position structurally above rocks exposed in the southeastern Sierra Nevada and transported to their present locations along low-angle detachment faults. Some of the granitic and metamorphic rocks in the northern part of the Salinian block are suggested to have originated from a position structurally above deep-level rocks of the southwestern Sierra Nevada. The Paleocene-lower Eocene Goler Formation of the El Paso Mountains and the post-Late Cretaceous to pre-lower Miocene Witnet Formation in the southernmost Sierra Nevada are hypothesized to have been deposited in supradetachment basins that formed adjacent to some of the detachment faults.
Regional age constraints for this inferred tectonic unroofing and disaggregation of the southern Sierra Nevada batholith suggest that it occurred between ∼90 to 85 Ma and ∼55 to 50 Ma. Upper-plate rocks of the detachment system appear to have been rotated clockwise by as much as 90° based on differences in the orientation of foliation and contacts between inferred correlative hanging-wall and footwall rocks. Transport of the upper-plate rocks is proposed to have occurred in two stages. First, the upper crust in the southern Sierra Nevada extended in a south to southeast direction, and second, the allochthonous rocks were carried westward at the latitude of the Mojave Desert by a mechanism that may include W-vergent faulting and/or oroclinal bending. The Late Cretaceous NNW extension of the upper crust in the southernmost Sierra Nevada postulated in this study is similar to Late Cretaceous, generally NW-directed, crustal extension that has been recognized to the northeast in the Funeral, Panamint, and Inyo mountains by others. Extensional collapse of the upper crust in the southern Sierra Nevada batholith may be closely linked to the emplacement of Rand Schist beneath the batholith during Late Cretaceous time, as has been suggested in previous studies.
The Duke Island ultramafic intrusion was emplaced into the Alexander terrane immediately preceding development of a regional mid-Cretaceous thrust belt. Paleomagnetic samples were collected from ...exposures of ultramafic rock with cumulate layering northwest of Judd Harbor and northwest of Hall Cove. Thermal demagnetization results were analyzed using principal component analysis to isolate the characteristic remanent magnetization. Site-mean characteristic directions determined from 16 sites fail the fold test at 95 percent confdence, indicating that cumulate layering attitudes were highly contorted at the time of magnetization, at least on a scale of tens of meters. Variations in cumulate layering attitudes probably resulted from the combined effects of thermal convection phenomena during crystallization and deformation following crystallization but prior to magnetization. Analysis of cumulate layering over larger structural domains indicates that kilometer-scale deformation produced southwest plunging folds within the Hall Cove and Judd Harbor bodies. (Author)
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