1. Crustal Deformation and Mountain Building
GEOLOGY OF NEW JERSEY
Crustal Deformation and Mountain Building

2. Behavior of rocks to stress & strain
Elastic
Elastic limit
Plastic
Brittle
Stress
Strain 3

3. FOLDS Plunging fold Structural dome Structural basin
Anticline vs. syncline
Hinge line (axis)
Limb
Axial plane
Plunging fold
Structural dome
Structural basin 6

11. FOLDS Interpreting folds Open fold Isoclinal fold Overturned fold
Recumbent fold 7

16. Faults Fractures in rock Normal Faults Reverse fault Strike-Slip fault
Thrust fault- low angle reverse fault
Strike-Slip fault
Left-lateral vs. right-lateral

26. Introduction
Mountain
Major mountain belts
Mountain range 2

27. Characteristics of Major Mountain Belts
Size and Alignment
Along continental margin
Long, arcuate chains
Ages of Mountain Belts and Continents
Youngest tend to be higher
Himalayas vs Appalachians
Craton- Oldest Continental Crust
Precambrian Shield 3

30. Characteristics of Major Mountain Belts
Patterns of Folding and Faulting
Fold and Thrust Belts
Crustal Shortening
Crustal Thickening
Metamorphism and Plutonism
Normal Faulting 4

31. Rifting
Subduction
Accretionary wedge
Volcanism
Plutonism
Orogeny
Subduction
Crustal Shortening &
Thickening
Collision
Major Orogeny

32. Evolution of a Mountain Belt
Accumulation Stage of Sediments
Accumulation in an Opening Ocean Basin
Accumulation along a Convergent Boundary
Graywackes
Magmatic Arc
Mountain Building Event- Orogeny 5

38. The Growth of Continents
Crust added by accumulation & igneous activity
Suspect and Exotic Terranes
Suspect terrane
Accreted terrane
Exotic terrane 8

40. The Wilson cycle (named after J
The Wilson cycle (named after J. Tuzo Wilson, one of the fathers of plate tectonics) refers to the cycle of ocean basin formation by rifting and seafloor spreading followed by ocean basin destruction and mountain building by subduction.

41. Geologic Evolution of Eastern North America

42. THE EARLY PALEOZOIC THE CAMBRIAN 544-505 MY CAMBRIA>>WALES
ADAM SEDGWICK 1835
THE ORDOVICIAN MY
ORDOVICE>>WELSH TRIBE
CHARLES LAPWORTH 1879

43. TECTONIC EVENTS
Overall scenario is coalescence of Pangea during most of the Paleozoic
Taconic Orogeny mid to late Ordovician
Caledonian Orogeny late Silurian to early Devonian
Acadian Orogeny mid Devonian
Alleghenian Orogeny late Penn, Permian
Hercynian Orogeny - Ouachita Orogeny

44. PLATE TECTONIC MOVEMENTS FROM THE NEOPROTEROZOIC TO THE DEVONIAN (750 MY TO 370MY)
BREAK UP OF RODINIA
AVALONIAN OROGENY
OPENING OF IAPETUS
OPENING OF RHEIC
TACONIC OROGENY
CLOSING OF IAPETUS
ACADIAN OROGENY

45. The Appalachians Valley and Ridge Blue Ridge Province Inner Piedmont
folded & faulted sedimentary rocks
Blue Ridge Province
metamorphosed Precambrian and Paleozoic Rks
Inner Piedmont
high grade metamorphic rocks intruded by granites
Charlotte & Carolina Slate Belt
metamorphosed & folded late Proterozoic & Cambrian sediments and volcanics

46. A) Cambro-Ordovician Passive Margin: Sandy Shelf Deposits B) Middle to Late Ordovician Development of Trench Along the Eastern Boundary and Subsequent Closure of the Iapetus Ocean C) Collision of Island Arc and other Accreted (exotic) Terranes with North America in the TACONIC OROGENY

47. Earliest Paleozoic time of lowest sea level due to
CAMBRIAN PALEOGEOGRAPHY: SHALLOW EPICONTINENTAL SEAS COVERED THE CENTRAL US
Earliest Paleozoic time
of lowest sea level due to
Proterozoic glaciations
By middle Cambrian sea
had flooded the continent

48. LITHOLOGIC FACIES OF THE CAMBRIAN

49. NEOPROTEROZOIC TO CENOZOIC TRANSGRESSIONS AND REGRESSIONS OBSERVED ON THE CRATON
Variable sea level represented sequences of sediments bounded by unconformities on all of the cratons - e.g. Sauk, Tippecanoe

50. ORDOVICIAN-PALEOGEOGRAPHY
Tippecanoe Transgression
St. Peter’s Sandstone

51. The Queenston Clastic Wedge
Redbeds coarser towards
the source area, Taconic
Highlands (4000m)

52. Early Paleozoic Climates
Climates overall warmer than today
Continents 600 N & S of equator
Arid to sub arid environments 450 N & S of equator
Redbeds (alluvial) 300 N & S of equator
Tropical reefs 300 N & S of equator
Cambrian Archeocyathids; Ordovician Bryozoans
Glaciation during the late Ordovician in Africa

53. THE MIDDLE PALEOZOIC THE SILURIAN 438-408 MY
SILURES>> WELSH TRIBE
Roderick Murchison 1835
THE DEVONIAN MY
(Old Red Sandstone)
DEVON>> County in SW England
Roderick Murchison
Adam Sedgwick 1839

54. INTRODUCTION Final Collision and Suturing of Baltica and Laurentia
Caledonian and Arcadian Orogenies
High Stands of Sea Level
Epicontinental seas; marine deposits and thick sequences of evaporites
Reefs became important

55. Paleogeography

56. PALEOGEOGRAPHY Closing of Iapetus Ocean
Baltica-Laurentia; Mongolia-Siberia
Closing of Rheic Ocean as Gondwana migrated to west (Laurentia/Baltica-Gondwana)
Laurentia continued to be a tropical craton
Shallow seas covered the continents during much of Silurian
Devonian orogenies in Northern Hemisphere
Caledonian (Scandinavia/Greenland) & Acadian (New England)

57. Cratons and Mobile Belts of North America and Europe

58. TECTONIC EVENTS Caledonian & Acadian Orogenies
Extension of Late Ordovician Taconic Orogeny
Mid Devonian Iapetus Ocean closed
Baltica collided with Laurentia
Avalonia (Island Arc) sutured to both Baltica and Laurentia

59. Orogenic Development Of the Eastern US
Acadian Orogeny produced
a thick clastic wedge (the
Catskill Wedge) of red beds
[conglomerates and sandstones]

60. East-West Cross Section across the Devonian Catskill Wedge
During the Devonian the rate of
sedimentation increased from
7m/MY to 17m/MY to 70m/MY
Chattanooga Shale- Anoxic black shale, marker bed

61. Lithofacies & Thickness Map of the Upper Devonian Sequence of the Eastern US

62. The Appalachians Valley and Ridge Blue Ridge Province Inner Piedmont
folded & faulted sedimentary rks
Blue Ridge Province
metamorphosed Precambrian and Paleozoic Rks
Inner Piedmont
high grade metamorphic rks intruded by granites
Charlotte & Carolina Slate Belt
metamorphosed & folded late Proterozoic & Cambrian sediments and volcanics

63. Physiographic Provinces of the Appalachian Region

64. Oriskany Sandstone Kaskaskia Transgression

65. Mineral Deposits
Sedimentary copper, silver, lead and zinc sulfides and Iron ores
Occur in shales and carbonates
Disseminated or interbedded
New York to Alabama

66. Stokes Forest
The area around Stokes Forest has a long history of mining attempts; none of them proved to be significant.
Mine prospects in the area have yielded traces of lead, silver, gold and copper, but not in economically recoverable amounts.
One operation, the Snook Mine, was dug in the 1880s by its proprietor, John Snook, who actually discovered a vein bearing silver ore.
He reported to have been paid $75.00 per ton for his ore.

68. Green Pond Outlier
The Green Pond Outlier is a complex northeast-trending belt of Paleozoic sedimentary rocks that bisects the Precambrian crystalline rocks of Reading Prong (Highlands Province), and extends for 65 miles between I-80 in New Jersey and the New York Thruway in New York.
The sedimentary rocks within this belt are folded into a complex synclinorium in which the beds are locally completely overturned, particularly in the New York end.
The Green Pond Outlier correlate to equivalent units in the Valley and Ridge region.
Green Pond Quartzite, an alluvial conglomerate which accumulated unconformably on an irregular surface of Precambrian.
It is a massive conglomerate and cross-bedded sandstone equivalent in age to the Shawangunk

69. Green Pond Outlier
By Late Silurian time the coarse clastic deposition gave way to finer-grained mud (represented by the Longwood Shale), and eventually to shallow marine carbonate deposition (Poxono Island and Berkshire Valley Formations).
The total thickness of the Silurian section is approximately 1,500 feet.

70. Green Pond Outlier
In the Green Pond Outlier, the Early Devonian is not represented (the entire Helderberg Group is missing).
Middle Devonian strata rest unconformably on the surface top of the Silurian section.
The base of the Devonian sequence is represented by the Connelly Conglomerate, an equivalent stratigraphic unit of the Oriskany Sandstone which crops out throughout the Appalachian Basin region.
The Connelly Conglomerate is overlain by a sequence of Middle Devonian shale and sandstone formations that locally bear marine invertebrate fossils.
In ascending order, the Middle Devonian units include Esopus Formation, Kanouse Sandstone, Cornwall Shale, and Bellvale Sandstone.
This Middle Devonian sequence approaches about 3,000 feet thick.

73. Appalachian Valley and Ridge
The erosional characteristics of the sedimentary rock formations exposed along great anticlines and synclines of the Appalachian Mountains are responsible for the characteristic Valley and Ridge topography.
Durable layers of sandstone and conglomerate form ridges, whereas less resistant limestone and shale underlie the valleys in the region.
Along the eastern margin of the Valley and Ridge is the Great Valley, a broad valley underlain by Cambrian and Ordovician shale and carbonate rocks that weather and erode faster that more durable sandstone and conglomerate that crop out in ridges and plateaus to the west

74. Kittatinny Mountain represents the eastern-most hogback ridge of Middle Paleozoic rocks of the Valley and Ridge

75. Aftermath of Taconic Orogeny
As the Taconic Orogeny subsided in early Silurian time, uplifts and folds in the Hudson Valley region were beveled by erosion.
Upon this surface sediments began to accumulate, the evidence for this is the Silurian Shawangunk Conglomerate, a massive, ridge-forming quartz sandstone and conglomerate formation, which rests unconformably on a surface of older gently- to steeply-dipping pre-Silurian age strata throughout the region.
This ridge of Shawangunk Conglomerate extends southward from the Hudson Valley along the eastern front of the Catskills.
It forms the impressive caprock ridge of the Shawangunk Mountains west of New Paltz, New York and west it becomes the prominent ridge-forming unit that crops out along the crest of Kittatinny Mountain in New Jersey.
The deposition of coarse alluvial sediments gave way to shallow marine fine-grained muds, and eventually to clear-water carbonate sediment accumulation with reefs formed from the accumulation of calcareous algae and the skeletal remains of coral, stromatoporoids, brachiopods, and other ancient marine fauna.

76. Acadian Orogeny
The Acadian Orogeny is the name of a long-lasting mountain building disturbance that most greatly affected the Northern Appalachian region (New England northeastward into the Gaspé region of Canada).
The "climax" of this orogeny is dated as early in the Late Devonian, but deformation, plutonism, and metamorphism related to this orogeny continued well into the Mississippian Period.
The cause of this great period of deformation is a result of the platedocking of a small continental landmass called Avalonia (named after the Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland).
The docking of Avalonia onto the margin of ancestral North America (referred to as Laurentia) resulted in the closing of a portion of the Iapetus Ocean

78. AVALONIA
The Acadian Orogeny spanned a period of about 50 million years (beginning roughly 375 million years ago). During the coarse of the orogeny, older rocks were deformed and metamorphosed, and new faults formed and older faults were reactivated.
Avalonia was gradually torn apart as plate tectonic forces accreted the landmass onto the edge of the larger North American continent.
Today, portions of the ancient Avalonia landmass occur in scattered outcrop belts along the eastern margin of North America.
One belt occurs in Newfoundland, another occurs along the western Bay of Fundy into eastern Maine. A large piece of Avalonia forms the bedrock of much of eastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and eastern Connecticut.
Equivalent landmass material is preserved as an extensive belt of rock known as the Carolina Slate Belt which extends from Virginia southward into Alabama.

79. Acadian Orogeny
As the Acadian Orogeny progressed, greater quantities of coarser clastic sediments migrated into shallow sea, building an extensive alluvial plain along the eastern margin of the seaway.
The Catskills region was proximal to the Acadian Highlands, and therefore was the site of the greatest accumulation of sediment in the region. (The boundary between the two geologic regions is a line approximating the location of the modern Hudson River.

80. The Alleghenian Orogeny
During late Paleozoic time the ancient Iapetus Ocean (also called Proto-Atlantic Ocean) continued to vanish as the North America continent (Laurentia) collided with Africa (which was part of a larger collection of continents called Gondwanaland).
As the continents collided, the rock material trapped in-between was crushed and forced upward into a great mountain range, probably similar in size and character of the modern Alps.
With nowhere to go, rocks along the eastern margin of the North American continent were shoved far inland (the same occurred in the opposite direction along the margin of the African continent, forming the Atlas Mountains of Morocco and the western Sahara).

82. The Alleghenian Orogeny
As the two continents collided, large belts of rock bounded by thrust faults piled one on top another, shortening of the crust along the eastern edge of North America in the North Carolina and Tennessee region by as much as 200 miles.
The relative amount of deformation gradually diminishes northward.
The fold belt extends northward through Pennsylvania and gradually peters in the vicinity of the New York border.
The Kittatinny Mountains in northwestern New Jersey mark the northeastern-most extension of the high ridges of the Valley and Ridge Province.

83. Aftermath
A great unconformity beneath the Triassic sedimentary rocks of the Newark Basin series represents an extensive period of erosion of uplifted rocks and sediments during and after the Alleghenian Orogeny.
In the New York Bight region, this unconformable surface is flooded beneath the lower Hudson River below the Palisades, and in New Jersey it is covered by younger sediments of the Coastal Plain.