COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Geological and Geochronological Characterization of Terranes in the Central Piedmont of Georgia

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The Piedmont of the Southern Appalachians has been shown to involve major overthrusts of crystalline rocks, possibly due to crustal delamination, but have also been shown to have evidence for major extensional features of the Piedmont in the southern Appalachians is therefore controversial, with competing models having the same terranes both autochthonous with respect to North America and exotic, and having major boundary faults extensional in one model, compressional in another with strike-slip motion in a third. This collaborative, field-based project centers on establishing the history of the more important terranes and their bounding faults. The work involves mapping, petrology and age dating within the Belair, Savannah River and Carolina terranes near Macon, Georgia, and on the Modoc fault which separates the Carolina and Savannah River terranes. Results are expected to resolve points of major disagreement among current tectonic models and provide a further means of testing the fundamentally important hypothesis that crustal delamination occurred at the onset of the late Paleozoic Alleghanian orogeny.