Paleozoic Framework of Gulf of Mexico

M. L. Feldman

A Paleozoic proto-Gulf of Mexico was formed by chronologically sequential continental collisions which migrated from northeast to southwest. Initial Ordovician and Devonian orogenies in the Appalachian province were predecessors to the genesis of the proto-Gulf of Mexico during Carboniferous and Permian times in Texas and northern Mexico. A southward-widening ocean existed between the North American ancestral craton and the impinging block. This geometric configuration, supplemented by drag delay along compressional transform margins, caused the prolonged time span between first and final impacts. In the Ouachita and Marathon provinces, triangularly shaped flysch depocenters (or "syns of the flysch") with north-plunging axes are postulated to have been the consequences of transform drag and related clockwise rotation of mobile block segments. The composite Muenster arch and the Central Basin platform are structurally analogous vertical block uplifts but of different tectonic age. These uplifts and the associated Anadarko-Ardmore and Delaware-Val Verde aulacogens in Oklahoma and Texas are impingement-related features on the stable cratonic block. An ancestral basement fabric of the North American craton predestined structural development of features such as the Central Basin platform and composite Muenster arch.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #91038©1987 AAPG Annual Convention, Los Angeles, California, June 7-10, 1987.