Tectonic, magmatic, and metamorphic history of the New Jersey Highlands: New insights from SHRIMP U-Pb geochronology
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Geology topics
Publications and source records attributed to Richard A. Volkert.
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T his p ortion of the field trip features visits to the world famous Sterling Hill and Franklin mines, in northwestern New Jersey, and their respective mining museums. Although both mines are no longer in operation, important geologic features can still be observed. At the Sterling Hill mine, we will have the opportunity to see zinc ore in place, both in an underground drift and in the Passaic open pit; at Franklin the pit is filled with water and only disseminated mineralization is still visible. The Furnace magnetite bed will also be seen adjacent to the Franklin open pit, as well as a large postore minette dike. If time permits we will visit a surface exposure of the Zero Fault in Franklin, which is an important regional structure that cuts the Sterling Hill orebody.
Middle Proterozoic rocks of the New Jersey Highlands consist of a basement of dacitic, tonalitic, trondhjemitic, and charnockitic rocks that constitute the Losee metamorphic suite. These rocks are unconformably overlain by a layered supracrustal sequence of quartzo-feldspathic and calcareous rocks. Abundant sheets of hornblende- and biotite-bearing rocks of the Byram intrusive suite and clinopyroxene-bearing rocks of the Lake Hopatcong intrusive suite were synkinematically emplaced at about 1,090 Ma. These intrusive suites constitute the Vernon Supersuite. The postorogenic Mount Eve Granite has been dated at 1,020?4 Ma and is confined to the extreme northern Highlands.
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Coastal plain sediments are underlain by pre-Mesozoic crystalline rocks. The inner coastal plain is underlain by schist that is correlated with the Potomac Terrane, as well as by mafic rocks probably equivalent to the Wilmington or Bel Air-Rising Sun terranes. The northern and central outer coastal plain is underlain by metasedimentary rocks similar to the Brompton-Cameron Terrane. Rocks beneath the southern coastal plain probably correlate with those of the Chopawamsic and Roanoke Rapids terranes.
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