Thermochronology of Upper Cretaceous and Paleocene Deposits in the Central Cordilleran Foreland Basin

Since the mid-1980's the significance of coarse-grained fluvial deposits in distal foreland basins has been hotly debated. In one school of thought such deposits represent the stratigraphic signature of tectogenic topographic rejuvenation in the thrust belt during episodes of thrust propagation. More recently such deposits have been interpreted to indicate thrust belt tectonic quiescence and erosionally driven isostatic rebound. One way to address this issue is to investigate the time span between source exhumation and sedimentation (i.e. lag time); coarse sediment produced and deposited during a period of rapid thrust propagation should exhibit short lag times, whereas coarse sediment produced by post-tectonic isostatic rebound should have longer lag times. We sampled coarse-grained proximal units in the Sevier thrust belt in Utah and their distal equivalents up to 300 km east of the thrust front, and generated detrital apatite fission track (AFT) and zircon (U-Th)/He (ZHe) ages. In the proximal foreland, the Campanian Price River Formation and the Maastrichtian to Paleocene North Horn Formation in the Charleston-Nebo salient of north-central Utah were sampled in order to, (1) identify the thermochronometer that most effectively records the source exhumation and, (2) measure lag times in foreland basin units of the proximal part of the foreland basin. ZHe ages from the Price River and North Horn Formations, as well as their distal equivalents, are discordant, indicating that the system was not fully reset. This suggests that these strata never experienced T> ~180 °C; or, it could be that α-damage has contributed to He retention. AFT ages from these samples appear to be fully reset and show a consistent younging up-section. AFT cooling ages for the upper Campanian Price River Formation are 79.8 ± 6.3 Ma in the lower part of the formation and 74.5 ± 6.4 Ma higher up in the section. The Maastrichtian to Paleocene North Horn Formation, which is separated from the Price River Formation by an angular unconformity, has an AFT age of 66.1 ± 6.2 Ma. This suggests that Paleozoic strata within the Charleston-Nebo salient were exhumed from ~4-5 km depth during the late Cretaceous, recording the timing of active deformation. The depositional ages of these units are within error of the cooling ages, indicating very short (approximating to 0) lag times, rapid exhumation of the Sevier fold-thrust belt, and syntectonic deposition. Ongoing work is focused on producing data from the distal equivalents of these proximal syntectonic sediments.