Collaborative Research: Alleghanian Tectonism in the Eastern Piedmont: A Deformed Metamorphic Core Complex and Localization of Crustal Detachment Zones in the Hinterland

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The tectonics of the southern Appalachians is dominated by northwestward vergent overthrusting and northeast trending dextral shearing of presumed late paleozoic age. These events obscure earlier deformational events. However, recently completed research suggests that the first event associated with the Alleghanian orogeny in the eastern Piedmont of Georgia and South Carolina was an episode of ductile low-angle normal faulting. This project will test this extensional hypothesis by mapping the kiokee belt and its boundaries westward into Georgia to a region where the overprinting effects of subsequent deformations are less severe and where the normal faults bounding the kiokee belt are exposed. Structural studies will clarify the shear sense and displacement directions and the deformation chronology will be established by U-Pb and 40 Ar/39 Ar techniques. The results are expected to help explain the brief periods of extensional tectonics that commonly characterize some collisional orogens.