Along-strike variations in foreland basin evolution: possible evidence for continental collision along an irregular margin

Abstract The evolution of a passive margin to a foreland basin is generally assumed to entail early load-induced up warping of the stable continental platform followed by foreland subsidence. This relatively straightforward elastic response of the continental platform, however, may be complicated if the colliding passive margin is irregular in outline. In a tectonic scenario in which an irregular margin is migrating toward a trench (A-subduction), those areas of the margin which project seaward, the continental promontories, would be the first to 'feel' the approaching thrust terrane by flexing upward and eroding to form shelf unconformities. Those parts of the continental margin that are convex to the craton, the continental re-entrants, however, would remain subsiding depocentres unaffected by load-induced uplift at the promontories. Careful analysis of the geographic distribution of shelf unconformities in orogenic belts, then, may help to reveal the pre-deformation morphology of the passive continental margin. An example of this may be found in the early phases of Ordovician foreland basin development in the central Appalachian orogen. Here, the shelf unconformities are most pronounced (greatest erosional relief) at the inferred Virginia and New York continental promontories. An adjacent inferred continental re-entrant, the Pennsylvania re-entrant, is characterized by an uninterrupted Ordovician sequence suggesting that the area of the proto-North American platform, represented by this segment of the orogen, remained a depocentre during uplift in adjacent areas of the continental margin.