Late Cretaceous uplift in the Malargüe fold-and-thrust belt (35oS), southern Central Andes of Argentina and Chile

The Cordillera de los Andes is the typical example of a subduction-related orogen. Its present topography is the result of post-Miocene uplift, however, Andean compressional deformation and uplift started in the Late Cretaceous, as increasingly recognized in different sectors of the mountain belt. W...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Mescua, J.F., Giambiagi, L.B., Ramos, V.A.
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2013
País:Argentina
Institución:Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales
Repositorio:Biblioteca Digital (UBA-FCEN)
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:paperaa:paper_07187092_v40_n1_p102_Mescua
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12110/paper_07187092_v40_n1_p102_Mescua
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Andes
Cretaceous
Foreland basin
Orogeny
deformation
fold and thrust belt
foreland basin
Miocene
normal fault
orogeny
provenance
subduction
topography
uplift
Argentina
Chile
Neuquen Basin
Descripción
Sumario:The Cordillera de los Andes is the typical example of a subduction-related orogen. Its present topography is the result of post-Miocene uplift, however, Andean compressional deformation and uplift started in the Late Cretaceous, as increasingly recognized in different sectors of the mountain belt. We present evidences of a Late Cretaceous event of compressional deformation in the southern Central Andes (35oS), reflected in syn-orogenic foreland basin deposits assigned to the Neuquén Group in Argentina and the Brownish-Red Clastic Unit in Chile. Comparison of the facies of these units allows us to recognize a sector proximal to the Late Cretaceous orogenic front, a distal sector with sediment provenance from the forebulge and a western sector where the sediments where deposited within the Late Cretaceous mountain belt. On this basis, we assign the orogenic front to an inverted Jurassic normal fault, the Río del Cobre fault, and reconstruct the structure of the easternmost Late Cretaceous Andes at this latitude. The change in the location of the orogenic front north and south of 35oS allows us to recognize a long-lived change in behavior in Andean evolution in this sector, which correlates with a change in the shape and the deposits of Mesozoic Neuquén basin.