Physical processes of shallow mafic dike emplacement near the San Rafael Swell, Utah
Some 200 shonkinite dikes, sills, and breccia bodies on the western Colorado Plateau of south-central Utah were intruded from approximately 3.7 to 4.6 Ma, contemporaneous with mafic volcanism along the nearby plateau margin. Thicknesses of dikes range to about 6 m; the log-normal mean thickness is 85 cm. Despite the excellent exposures of essentially all dikes in strata of the Jurassic San Rafael Group, their number is indeterminate from their outcrop and spacing because they are everywhere greatly segmented. By our grouping of almost 2000 dike segments, most dikes are less than 2 km in outcrop length; the longest is 9 km. Because the San Rafael magmas were primitive and probably ascended directly from the mantle, dike lengths in outcrop are much less than their heights. The present exposures probably lie along the irregular upper peripheries of dikes that lengthen and merge with depth. Orientations of steps on dike contacts record local directions of dike-fracture propagation; about half of the measurements plunge less than 30°, showing that lateral propagation at dike peripheries is as important as the vertical propagation ultimately responsible for ascent. The San Rafael dikes, now exposed after erosion of about 0.5–1.5 km, appear to thicken and shorten upward, probably because near-surface vesiculation enhanced magmatic driving pressures. Propagation likely ceased soon after the first dike segments began to feed nearby sills or vented to initiate small-volume eruptions.