Re-evaluation of acoustic, gamma ray and dip meter logs from the Cominco American Federal No. 2 well in the Sevier Desert basin of west-central Utah sheds new light on the interpretation of Neoproterozoic and Cambrian stratigraphy and Mesozoic structure in a region that has been influential in the development of ideas about crustal shortening and extension. The most prominent of several major t...

Burgess Shale-type deposits are renowned for their exquisite preservation of soft-bodied organisms, representing a range of animal body plans that evolved during the Cambrian 'explosion'. However, the rarity of these fossil deposits makes it difficult to reconstruct the broader-scale distributions of their constituent organisms. By contrast, microscopic skeletal elements represent an extensive ...

The Southern Highland Group (Dalradian) and Keltie Water Grit Formation, which includes the Lower Cambrian Leny Limestone, form an inverted, 1.4 km thick, largely arenaceous, sequence at Callander. The grits have the same detrital mineralogy throughout, mainly quartz, plagioclase (An1–3), muscovite, and biotite. Chlorite formed from detrital biotite during low-grade regional metamorphism (T<270...

The dramatic diversification of animal groups known as the Cambrian Explosion (evolution’s ‘Big Bang’) remains an unsolved puzzle in Earth Science. The Vendian–Cambrian interval is characterized by anomalously high rates of apparent plate motion, interpreted as True Polar Wander (TPW), and by more than a dozen large, high-frequency perturbations in carbon isotopes that dwarf all others observed...

The existence of unusually large fluctuations in the Neoproterozoic (1,000-543 million years ago) carbon-isotopic record implies strong perturbations to the Earth's carbon cycle. To analyze these fluctuations, we examine records of both the isotopic content of carbonate carbon and the fractionation between carbonate and marine organic carbon. Together, these are inconsistent with conventional, ...

The Terra Nova Intrusive Complex (TNIC) in northern Victoria Land, Antarctica, results from widespread magmatism during the Early Paleozoic Ross Orogeny. According to field relationships, geochemistry, and geochronology data, part of TNIC comprises Browning Unit (BIU), which is associated with an arc crustal melting including migmatization Wilson Metamorphic Complex, later Campbell (CIU), attri...

Detrital zircon populations of the South Qiangtang terrane (SQT) provide vital information for reconstructing Tethyan evolution Tibetan Plateau but are obscured by undefined affiliation detrital samples and superimposition multiple tectonothermal events. We outlined SQT based on geological mapping collated Cambrian-Triassic to investigate representative populations. Although diachronous strata ...

The latest Neoproterozoic through Cambrian is one of the most remarkable intervals in geologic time. Tectonically, the period from 580 to 490 Ma marks a time of rapid plate reorganization following the final stages of supercontinental breakup and Gondwana assembly. The apparent speed at which this reorganization occurred led some to propose a link between tectonic events, biologic changes and c...

Abstract Carbonate U-Pb dating of samples from rift-bounding faults intracontinental basins in the Borborema province, northeastern Brazil, indicate recurrent tectonic activity during Pangea breakup lasting for &amp;gt;150 m.y. Late Triassic to Paleocene, reactivating inherited strike-slip Neoproterozoic–Cambrian shear zones. ages that brittle deformation started some 80 before previously known...