Award Date
1-1-1997
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science (MS)
Department
Geoscience
First Committee Member
Margaret N. Rees
Number of Pages
90
Abstract
The Douglas Conglomerate in the Churchill Mountains of Antarctica is a polymictic, unconformity-bounded unit whose age is poorly constrained between Late Cambrian and Devonian. Its source areas were local, including outcrops of Cambrian Shackleton Limestone, the craton of Greater Antarctica, and perhaps, terranes that lay outboard of the craton but subsequently were dispersed along transform faults; Petrographic analyses suggest a recycled orogen provenance for the Douglas Its depositional basin may have developed within a fold-and-thrust belt or along an active transform fault. Subsequent tectonism dismembered the formation, but its composition suggests the basin had fault-controlled margins walled within Shackleton Limestone and numerous simultaneously active depositional systems; Although the Douglas crops out within the trend of Cambro-Ordovician granitic batholiths it does not record the unroofing of these plutons. Therefore, it is probably older than the intrusives and was deposited in response to an earlier tectonic event.
Keywords
Antarctica; Churchill; Conglomerate; Las Vegas; Mountains; Paleozoic; Provenance; Significance; Tectonic
Controlled Subject
Geology
File Format
File Size
3235.84 KB
Degree Grantor
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Language
English
Permissions
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Repository Citation
Panttaja, Susan Kay, "Provenance and tectonic significance of the Lower Paleozoic Douglas Conglomerate, northern Churchill Mountains, Antarctica" (1997). UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations. 8.
http://dx.doi.org/10.25669/nomd-jo7e
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