New Constraints on the Timing and Magnitude of Deformation and Basin Exhumation in the Eastern Cordillera of NW Argentina.

The Angastaco Basin is a ~20km wide and ~6km thick intramontane basin within the Eastern Cordillera (EC) of NW Argentina. The basin is bounded to the east and west by reverse faults that put basement rocks of the Paleozoic Puncoviscana and Cretaceous Santa Barbara Group on top of the Cenozoic sequence. Numerous faults and folds disrupt the basin internally. Some, if not most, of these structures seem to be the result of reactivation of previous normal faults related to the Salta Rift (Carrera et al. , 2006). Recent structural and thermochronological data from the EC of Argentina suggest tectonic deformation in the Eocene-Miocene (e.g., Coutand et al., 2006; Hogn et al., 2007). Data from the EC in Bolivia suggest that deformation ceased by ca. 10.7 Ma (McQuarrie et al., 2005). Therefore, different challenging questions remain open such as: (1) Are all the structures observed in the basin and along its margin a result of reactivation? (2) When was the timing and what was the magnitude of deformation within the basin and surrounding region? New detailed mapping and cross-sections in the Angastaco Basin reveal a number of faults and folds never before documented, including several km-scale west vergent folds interspersed with a complex arrangement of smaller, more angular, east-vergent faults and folds. Clear influence from both east and west-vergent deformation within the basin suggests interplay between the eastward propagation of EC related structures and westward reactivation of Santa Barbara System structures. A lack of structural continuity across the roughly E-W trending portions of Rio Calchaqui suggests that the river follows one or more unexposed strike- slip faults as it cuts across the Tertiary section from W to E. Minor offsets and lack of lateral continuity suggest that these faults are likely tear-faults coeval with deformation in the basin, although they may have been active during multiple pulses of tectonism. With an east-west trend, these structures could be potentially related to the reactivation of Cretaceous relay-zone structures. Flexural-slip folding is the dominant mechanism of folding within the basin, with centimeter to meter scale fracture-rich and slickenside-rich beds of fine silts acting as primary slip-surfaces between thicker, more competent beds of coarse sand and conglomerate. A newly discovered intra-formational angular unconformity near the base of the Angastaco Fm. documents growth during the early stages of deposition. However, there is no clear evidence of continuous growth up section, implying at least two pulses of significant deformation during syn- and post- Miocene time. New apatite (U-Th)/He thermochronology (AHe) from six samples from the Eocene-Oligocene(?) Quebrada de los Colorados Fm and the Miocene Angastaco Fm (~18 Ma) in the Angastaco and surrounding Pucara and Tin Tin basins yields youngest ages between ca. 13.2 Ma (to the west) and ca. 10.3 Ma (to the east), and correlate with low Uranium content. We interpret these ages as representative of cooling following basin exhumation in the Miocene. The younging of those ages towards the east, together with structural data indicating young Mio-Pliocene deformation, suggests that those ages may be the result of eastward propagation of deformation into the foreland driving basin exhumation.