Connecting South America to the Global Miocene and the Deep Earth
Potter, Paul E.1 and Szatmari, Peter
1[email protected]
Many major landscape events occurred across South America and its offshore in the Miocene, especially in the Middle and Upper Miocene. These examples include all the continent-rejuvenation of the Andes and intense volcanism of the Altoplano/Puna (the second largest in the world), reversal of the Amazon and changes in course of the Orinoco with growth of their deep sea fans, deposition of thick foreland basins in Paraguay and northward along the eastern side of the Andes, retreat of a shallow sea in the Llanos, development of bordering deep sea unconformities, and heightened relief of South America’s passive margin with deposition of coastal gravels. Broadly comparable events also occurred world wide. These include:
Tectonics
Oceans and Atmosphere
On land
All these diverse global changes in the atmosphere, oceans, and continents occurred in only 11 Ma and thus point to a single deep earth cause. We summarize in a flow diagram how major earth surface processes are related to each other and the deep Earth. Central to this idea is the concept of "dynamic topography", which relates major earth features to seismological inferred changes in density or chemistry of the mantle
AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90166©2013 AAPG International Conference & Exhibition, Cartagena, Colombia, 8-11 September 2013