No description available.

No description available.

In the Paria Plateau area of northern Arizona and southern Utah the Chinle formation of Upper Triassic age consists of a thick series of Ienticular sandstone, siltstone, claystone, and limestone. The series thins northwestward from about 900 feet at Lees Ferry, Ariz., to about 800 feet at Paria, Utah. Four members of the Chinle formation are recognized—1) the basal Shinarump member composed of conglomeratic sandstone and subordinate shale, 2) a unit, herein named the Lowery Spring member, composed of sandstone and mudstone, 3) the Petrified Forest member composed of bentonitic siltstone and claystone and thin sandstone, and 4) the Owl Rock member composed of cherty limestone and calcareous siltstone. Only the Petrified Forest member is present at all localities in the Paria Plateau area. The Shinarump member was deposited in topographic low areas on an erosion surface and its distribution is irregular. The Lowery Spring and Owl Rock members grade and pinch-out toward the northwest and are not present at Paria, Utah. The upper contact of the Chinle formation is locally unconformable. The three lowermost members were deposited on a broad, flat plain between the Cordilleran geosyncline and highlands to the southeast. In Owl Rock time the rising Cordilleran geanticline cut off the north-westward drainage of Chinle streams and a depositional basin trending southwest was formed.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The Antler and Sonoma orogenies occurred along the southwest-trending passive Pacific margin of North America during the Paleozoic concluding with the accretion of the McCloud Arc. A southeast-trending sinistral transform fault truncated the continental margin in the Permian, becoming a locus for initiation of an east-dipping subduction zone creating the Sierran magmatic arc. Constrained in age between two early Triassic tuff layers, the volcanic clasts in the breccia of Frog Lakes represent one of the earliest records of mafic magmatism in the eastern Sierra Nevada. Tholeiitic rock clasts found in the breccia of Frog Lakes in the Saddlebag Lake pendant in the east central Sierra Nevada range in composition from 48% to 63% SiO2. Boninites produced by early volcanism of subduction initiation by spontaneous nucleation at the Izu-Bonin-Mariana arc are more depleted in trace element concentrations than the clasts while andesites from the northern volcanic zone of the Andes produced on crust 50 km thick have similar levels of enrichment and provide a better geochemical modern analogue. Textural analysis of the breccia of Frog Lakes suggest a subaqueous environment of deposition from a mature magmatic arc built on continental crust > 50 km thick during the Triassic. The monzodiorites of Saddlebag and Odell Lakes are temporal intrusive equivalents of the breccia of Frog Lakes and zircon geochemistry indicates a magmatic arc petrogenesis.