Date of Award

Fall 1988

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Ocean & Earth Sciences

Program/Concentration

Geology

Committee Director

Ramesh Venkatakrishnan

Committee Member

Randall Spencer

Committee Member

Thomas Gathright

Call Number for Print

Special Collections LD4331.G4W37

Abstract

Page Valley contains folded and faulted Cambro-Ordovician rocks that were deformed during the Pennsylvanian-Permian Alleghanian Orogeny. Previous authors (Allen, 1967; Thornton, 1953; and King, 1950) have mapped "high-angle" faults and a klippe along the South Fork of the Shenandoah River west of Luray, Virginia. The southernmost fault offsets the New Market/Lincolnshire and Edinburg formations with the upthrown block to the west. Thornton suggested gravity sliding and strike-slip movement to explain normal displacements along the northernmost fault where the Edinburg Formation is in contact with overturned beds of the Beekmantown Formation. A klippe, as mapped by Allen and Thornton, lies on the Edinburg-Martinsburg formational contact. Thornton suggested that the klippe was an "erratic block" or landslide from the east; the source of which is now eroded.

Recent field work indicates the above faults are indeed shallower (10-20°) and dip westward. Thrusting followed an east to west directed imbrication and were inturn subsequently folded by continued deformation. Folds are characterized by chevron geometries and exhibit west-verging asymmetry in profile at both the regional and mesoscopic scale. Solution cleavage, trending N18-38E, parallels the regional structural trend, is primarily axial planar, and developed during the formation of fault-propagation folds. Regional shortening of approximately 42% was accomplished by thrust faulting, parallel and similar folding, and development of solution cleavage.

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DOI

10.25777/ygax-mc84

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