ABSTRACT: Three-Step Palinspastic Restoration of a North-South Structural Cross Section through the Uinta Mountains

Donald S. Stone

A true scale structural cross section (reduced from 1:24,000) has been drawn north-south through the Uinta Mountains in northeastern Utah. The section crosses the Uinta Uplift from Red Wash field in the Uinta basin on the south to Clay basin field in the Green River basin on the north, a distance of about 105 km. Surface geologic mapping (USGS) and considerable borehole and seismic information comprise the database.

The original section was palinspastically restored in three major steps, beginning with the removal of post-Paleozoic (Laramide and Ancestral Rockies) folding and thrusting along the reactivated (inverted) north and south flank megafault zones (about 250 Ma). The second section is a restoration of the early rift basin in which the upper Proterozoic Uinta Mountain Group fluvial-deltaic clastics were deposited about 1.0 Ga. In this section the north and south flank thrusts become trough-limiting, listric normal faults. The third section is restored to the beginning of middle Proterozoic (about 1.75 Ga) and assumes a genetic association with the southern boundary of the Wyoming Archean province along the Cheyenne Belt or suture zone.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #91002©1990 AAPG Rocky Mountain Section Meeting, Denver, Colorado, September 16-19, 1990