SHUMAKER, ROBERT C., West Virginia University, Geology and Geography, Morgantown, WV

ABSTRACT: Is Structure of the Central Basin Uplift (Platform) in West Texas Inherited?

Paleozoic history of the Permian basin is similar to other North American continental basins that have gone thru rift, sag and yoked stages. Evidence of a Precambrian and/or Cambrian rift in the central Basin Platform area comes from a basement well and gravity maps. Regional isopach andlithofacies maps of mid-paleozoic rocks of the sag-stage Tobosa basin outlinea large basement block, possibly the earlier-formed graben, that became the Platform. This area was thrust upward during the Late Mississippian and Pennsylvanian to become the Central Basin Uplift which, with subsequent erosion, became the Platform for Permian reef growth. The fault pattern alongthe Uplift, which formed by compression, resembles that of the East African Rifts and North Sea Graben, except block-bounding faults ave reverse rather than normal offset. The north trend of the precursor graben is at a high angle to the late-paleozoic direction of compression. It is suggested that crustal compression reactivated faults developed during the graben stage and increased the offset between adjacent (opposed) graben blocks by left-lateral offset along faults within intra-block transfer zones. Fault patterns ofprecursor grabens that trend at low angles to later compression (the Anadarko Basin?) should be modified by transpressional, strike-slip movement.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90987©1993 AAPG Annual Convention, New Orleans, Louisiana, April 25-28, 1993.