Caribbean Basin Framework, 1: Introduction, Nicaraguan Rise and Greater Antilles

MANN, PAUL, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX

Recent progress in lithologic description and microfossil dating of onshore basins from around the Caribbean has improved constraints on the age and tectonic setting of major basin-forming periods. We present an integrated tectonostratigraphic summary from the northern, western, and southwestern Caribbean and use this framework to interpret seismic profiles in offshore areas lacking wells.

There are four major basin-forming periods on the Nicaraguan Rise and Greater Antilles:1. Early Cretaceous to middle to late Eocene island arc growth with limited intra-arc basin formation.2. Late Cretaceous-early Eocene back-arc extension formed deep-water basins behind the Cuban arc (Yucatan), the Hispaniola arc (Peralta), and the Lesser Antilles arc (Grenada).3. Early Eocene-early Oligocene collision between the Greater Antilles island arc and the Bahamas platform formed elongate clastic basins parallel to NW arc trends.4. Late Eocene to Recent strike-slip faulting formed a California-type borderland; deepest basins formed in the Hispaniola restraining bend.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #91004 © 1991 AAPG Annual Convention Dallas, Texas, April 7-10, 1991 (2009)