The Yavapai orogeny was an orogenic (mountain-building) event in what is now the

Southwestern United States The Southwestern United States, also known as the American Southwest or simply the Southwest, is a geographic and cultural list of regions of the United States, region of the United States that includes Arizona and New Mexico, along with adjacen ...

that occurred between 1710 and 1680 million years ago ( Mya), in the Statherian Period of the

Paleoproterozoic The Paleoproterozoic Era (also spelled Palaeoproterozoic) is the first of the three sub-divisions ( eras) of the Proterozoic eon, and also the longest era of the Earth's geological history, spanning from (2.5–1.6 Ga). It is further sub ...

. Recorded in the rocks of

New Mexico New Mexico is a state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States. It is one of the Mountain States of the southern Rocky Mountains, sharing the Four Corners region with Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. It also ...

and

Arizona Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...

, it is interpreted as the collision of the 1800-1700 Mya age Yavapai

island arc Island arcs are long archipelago, chains of active volcanoes with intense earthquake, seismic activity found along convergent boundary, convergent plate tectonics, tectonic plate boundaries. Most island arcs originate on oceanic crust and have re ...

terrane with the proto-North American continent. This was the first in a series of orogenies within a long-lived

convergent boundary A convergent boundary (also known as a destructive boundary) is an area on Earth where two or more lithospheric plates collide. One plate eventually slides beneath the other, a process known as subduction. The subduction zone can be defined by a ...

along southern

Laurentia Laurentia or the North American craton is a large continental craton that forms the Geology of North America, ancient geological core of North America. Many times in its past, Laurentia has been a separate continent, as it is now in the form of ...

that ended with the ca. 1200–1000 Mya

Grenville orogeny The Grenville orogeny was a long-lived Mesoproterozoic mountain-building event associated with the assembly of the supercontinent Rodinia. Its record is a prominent orogenic belt which spans a significant portion of the North American continent, ...

during the final assembly of the

supercontinent In geology, a supercontinent is the assembly of most or all of Earth's continent, continental blocks or cratons to form a single large landmass. However, some geologists use a different definition, "a grouping of formerly dispersed continents", ...

Rodinia Rodinia (from the Russian родина, ''rodina'', meaning "motherland, birthplace") was a Mesoproterozoic and Neoproterozoic supercontinent that assembled 1.26–0.90 billion years ago (Ga) and broke up 750–633 million years ago (Ma). wer ...

, which ended an 800-million-year episode of convergent boundary tectonism.

Description

Age and isotope data show that southern North America is composed of a series of northeast-trending provinces representing island arc terranes accreted onto the 1800 Mya core of Laurentia. These are the Yavapai province (1800–1700 Mya), the Mazatzal province (1700–1650 Mya), the Granite-Rhyolite province (1500–1300 Mya), and the Llano-Grenville province (1300–1000 Mya). Each is interpreted as juvenile crust of an island arc, together with smaller amounts of reworked older crust, that accreted to Laurentia in an orogenic pulse accompanied by pluton emplacement. The plutons sutured new and existing orogens together and helped convert the juvenile terranes to mature crust. The orogen pulses are identified as the Yavapai orogeny at 1710–1680 Mya, the Mazatzal orogeny at 1650–1600 Ga, the Picuris orogeny at 1450–1300 Mya, and the Grenville orogeny at 1300–950 Mya. Some of the orogens were accompanied by slab rollback. This created short-lived extensional basins at 1700 and 1650 Mya that accumulated sand and high-silica volcanic debris to form

quartzite-

rhyolite Rhyolite ( ) is the most silica-rich of volcanic rocks. It is generally glassy or fine-grained (aphanitic) in texture (geology), texture, but may be porphyritic, containing larger mineral crystals (phenocrysts) in an otherwise fine-grained matri ...

successions. Subsequent convergent tectonics closed the basins and

thrust Thrust is a reaction force described quantitatively by Newton's third law. When a system expels or accelerates mass in one direction, the accelerated mass will cause a force of equal magnitude but opposite direction to be applied to that ...

imbricated the successions. That is, faulted blocks of rock were stacked atop each other like shingles on a roof. The northeast-trending provinces are truncated by

Neoproterozoic The Neoproterozoic Era is the last of the three geologic eras of the Proterozoic geologic eon, eon, spanning from 1 billion to 538.8 million years ago, and is the last era of the Precambrian "supereon". It is preceded by the Mesoproterozoic era an ...

passive margins that indicate the orogenic system once extended much further. This is part of the basis for the AUSWUS reconstruction of Rodinia, which places Australia adjacent to the southwestern US from 1800 to 1000 Mya. Other supporting evidence includes correspondence of 1450 and 1000 Ga paleomagnetic poles between Australia and Laurentia. The northeastern extension of the orogenic belt would then correspond to the Gothian orogeny in

Baltica Baltica is a paleocontinent that formed in the Paleoproterozoic and now constitutes northwestern Eurasia, or Europe north of the Trans-European Suture Zone and west of the Ural Mountains. The thick core of Baltica, the East European Craton, i ...

and the southwestern extension to the Albany-Fraser orogeny. However, the placement of Australia has been disputed on the basis of paleomagnetic data. The

SWEAT Perspiration, also known as sweat, is the fluid secreted by sweat glands in the skin of mammals. Two types of sweat glands can be found in humans: eccrine glands and Apocrine sweat gland, apocrine glands. The eccrine sweat glands are distribu ...

reconstruction places East Antarctica on the southwest extension of the Yavapai Province. The Yavapai Province was named for the Yavapai Supergroup in central

. It extends from

Colorado Colorado is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States. It is one of the Mountain states, sharing the Four Corners region with Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. It is also bordered by Wyoming to the north, Nebraska to the northeast, Kansas ...

south of the Cheyenne belt, then northeastward to the mid-continent region. The southern boundary is somewhat poorly defined, possibly because it corresponds to a shallow relic subduction zone, but runs roughly along the Jemez Lineament. Individual island arc terranes accreted to Laurentia during the Yavapai Orogeny include the Elves Chasm block in the

Grand Canyon The Grand Canyon is a steep-sided canyon carved by the Colorado River in Arizona, United States. The Grand Canyon is long, up to wide and attains a depth of over a mile (). The canyon and adjacent rim are contained within Grand Canyon Nati ...

, Green Mountain, Dubois-Cochetopa, Irving Formation, Moppin-Gold Hill, and Ash Creek- Payson. The latter includes the Payson

Ophiolite An ophiolite is a section of Earth's oceanic crust and the underlying upper mantle (Earth), upper mantle that has been uplifted and exposed, and often emplaced onto continental crustal rocks. The Greek word ὄφις, ''ophis'' (''snake'') is ...

. Quartzite-rhyolite successions associated with extensional basins include the Vadito Group and Hondo Group in

and the Mazatzal Group in Arizona, deposited during the transition from the Yavapai to the Mazatzal orogens at 1700 Mya. The extensional basin in which the Mazatzal Group was deposited lasted about 30 Ma, from the Payson Ophiolite at 1730 Mya to the Mazatzal Peak Quartzite sometime after 1700 Mya. A number of regional orogenies fall within the time span of the Yavapai orogeny and are regarded as parts of the overall orogenic system. These include the Ivanpah orogeny (1710–1680 Mya) in the New York Mountains area; the Central Plains orogeny in the mid-continent; the Medicine Bow orogeny at 1708–1750 Mya that produced the Cheyenne belt, the Colorado province or Colorado orogeny at 1780–1700 Mya.

References

{{reflist, colwidth=33em Orogenies of North America Geology of Arizona Precambrian geology of New Mexico Paleoproterozoic orogenies Proterozoic North America

Description

See also

References