--> ABSTRACT: Significance of Blind or Low-Angle Normal Faults, by Peter B. Jones; #91030 (2010)

Datapages, Inc.Print this page

Significance of Blind or Low-Angle Normal Faults

Peter B. Jones

Computer simulation of blind or low-angle normal-fault geometry suggests simple alternative models for the evolution of a variety of geologic structures in both compressional and extensional crustal stress regimes. Examples include the Golden fault, Madden anticline, and Purbeck monocline.

The Golden fault has the geometry of an upturned low-angle normal fault and bedding-plane detachment in the uppermost Pierre Shale. It accommodates the slip of the west-dipping blind thrust that underlies the Colorado Front Range. The Madden anticline, Wind River basin, represents an early stage of foreland "uplift," in which blind thrust movement is balanced by a blind low-angle normal fault and bedding-plane detachment in the Cody Shale. The Purbeck monocline of southern England can be modeled as a hanging-wall fold overlying a blind listric normal fault rooted in the Mesozoic and formed in a single phase of Cenozoic movement.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #91030©1988 AAPG Annual Convention, Houston, Texas, 20-23 March 1988.