Evidence for pre-Cenozoic extension in the eastern Main Ranges of the southern Canadian Rockies

Abstract

Abstract The eastern Main Ranges of the southern Canadian Rocky Mountain thrust-and-fold belt include a network of normal faults (the result of apparent extensional episodes) that occur within a contractional orogen. The origin, timing, and nature of these normal faults remain unresolved. A widely accepted explanation proposes that the normal faults developed as a consequence of postcontractional transtension that occurred west of the Rocky Mountain Trench during the Paleogene Period. Detailed field mapping of deformation in the vicinity of several normal faults has provided evidence that the normal fault surfaces and adjacent strata underwent deformation during a contractional episode after the normal faults had formed. Within the study area, located in the upper Kicking Horse region of Yoho National Park, British Columbia, Canada, and within the larger region of the Rocky Mountain belt, the network of normal faults is proposed to have developed as a consequence of rifting that separated pericratonic terranes from North America and produced the Slide Mountain Ocean during the Carboniferous and Permian Periods. Overprinting from more recent tectonic episodes has obscured most of these inferred extensional faults throughout the North American Cordillera. Within the study area, however, the Cretaceous to Paleogene contraction carried the normal faults to their present location over unattenuated continental crust, without significant overprinting. This preservation of the network of normal faults allows for investigation of the relationships among the fault surfaces and the strata adjacent to each fault.