Elsevier

Earth and Planetary Science Letters

Volume 386, 15 January 2014, Pages 52-63
Earth and Planetary Science Letters

High elevation of the ‘Nevadaplano’ during the Late Cretaceous

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2013.10.046Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Clumped isotope thermometry is applied to Late Cretaceous and Paleocene terrestrial carbonates.

  • The temperature estimates reflect summer conditions.

  • When corrected for climate change, the temperature difference is 13.0 °C.

  • The temperature difference implies a minimum elevation of 2.2–3.1 km for central Nevada.

  • Uncertainties in our estimate broaden the range to 2 km.

Abstract

During the Late Cretaceous, central Nevada may have been a high elevation plateau, the Nevadaplano; some geodynamic models of the western US require thickened crust and high elevations during the Mesozoic to drive the subsequent tectonic events of the Cenozoic while other models do not. To test the hypothesis of high elevations during the late Mesozoic, we used carbonate clumped isotope thermometry to determine the temperature contrast between Late Cretaceous to Paleocene carbonates atop the putative plateau in Nevada versus carbonates from relatively low paleoelevation central Utah site. Lacustrine carbonates from the Nevada site preserve summer temperatures ∼13 °C cooler than summer temperatures from paleosol carbonates from the Utah site, after correcting for ∼1.2 °C of secular climatic cooling between the times of carbonate deposition at the two sites. This ∼13 °C temperature difference implies an elevation difference between the two sites of 2.23.1 km; including uncertainties from age estimation and climate change broadens this estimate to 2 km. Our findings support crustal thickness estimates and Cenozoic tectonic models that imply thickened crust and high elevation in Nevada during the Mesozoic.

Introduction

Reconstructions of crustal thickness, spatial and temporal distributions of mid-crustal metamorphism, and sedimentary basins indicate that by the end of the Mesozoic, central Nevada may have been a high elevation plateau (Coney and Harms, 1984, DeCelles, 2004, Druschke et al., 2011, Druschke et al., 2009b, Ernst, 2010), termed the ‘Nevadaplano’ (DeCelles, 2004). The probable ‘Nevadaplano’ formed in the hinterland between the Sierra Nevada volcanic arc to the west and the Sevier fold and thrust belt to the east (Fig. 1) during Jurassic–Eocene contraction associated with subduction of the Farallon plate under North America (DeCelles, 2004). During the Cenozoic, tectonic deformation in the western United States was dominated by extension. Extension via block-faulting is generally attributed to the migration of the Mendocino triple junction after intersection of the East Pacific Rise with southern California at 25 Ma (Dickinson, 2002). However, the cause of Late Cretaceous and early Cenozoic extension, which is commonly associated with metamorphic core complexes and magmatism (Armstrong and Ward, 1991, Coney and Harms, 1984), is debated.

Some workers suggest that Mesozoic contraction thickened and elevated the crust, resulting in sufficient gravitational potential energy to drive later extension (e.g. Jones et al., 1998). Alternatively, the slab-buckling model (Humphreys, 1995) neither requires nor precludes previously thickened and elevation crust in the Mesozoic–Cenozoic Sevier hinterland to drive Cenozoic extension. This model, and similar models that suggest uplift due to removal of mantle lithosphere during the early Cenozoic (e.g. Saltus and Thompson, 1995), are favored by stable-isotope paleoelevation reconstructions from that suggest the western Cordillera reached peak elevations in the early Cenozoic during a diachronous, north-to-south sweep of surface uplift (Horton et al., 2004, Kent-Corson et al., 2006, Mix et al., 2011).

Our current understanding of paleoelevation within the Mesozoic–Paleocene western Cordillera results from indirect sources. Unspecified high elevation is inferred from favorable comparison of the Sevier hinterland with the modern Tibetan Plateau and Andean Altiplano (Coney and Harms, 1984, Molnar and Chen, 1983). Crustal thickness estimates of 50–60 km (e.g. Coney and Harms, 1984) led some authors to infer elevations for the Sevier hinterland of >2 km and more likely >3 km (DeCelles, 2004, DeCelles and Coogan, 2006, House et al., 2001, Jones et al., 1998). Similarity of paleodrainage relief in the ancestral Sierra Nevada (inferred from apatite (U–Th)/He ages) to long-wavelength relief in modern orogens was used to interpret elevations of >3 km in the interior of the Cordillera during the Cretaceous (House et al., 2001). Finally, isotope-enabled global climate models find the best match between model-predicted and existing mineral δ18O values from simulations that prescribe high elevations in the western Cordillera (Fricke et al., 2010, Poulsen et al., 2007). A recent study investigating pre-extensional paleoelevations of the Sheep Pass Basin in central Nevada uses Paleocene–Eocene temperatures to suggest low-to-moderate elevations (2 km) of the region (Lechler et al., 2013). Although these data pre-date Miocene extension, they temporally overlap with early Cenozoic extension and the elevation estimate integrates data over 15 m.y.; therefore this estimate may not capture peak elevation of the Sevier hinterland prior to extension. Thus, while these previous studies generally suggest the Sevier hinterland was elevated, direct estimates of the paleoelevation are lacking.

We use carbonate clumped isotope (Δ47) thermometry (Ghosh et al., 2006) to determine formation temperatures of 6860 Ma lacustrine carbonates from the Sheep Pass Formation of east–central Nevada (NV), atop the hypothesized Nevadaplano (Druschke et al., 2009b, Vandervoort and Schmitt, 1990) (Fig. 1), and from 7571 Ma paleosol carbonates of the presumably low elevation North Horn Formation in central Utah (UT) (DeCelles and Coogan, 2006, Lawton and Trexler, 1991) (Fig. 1). We use the temperature contrast between the sites to estimate paleoelevation of the Sevier hinterland during the latest Cretaceous. This estimate is complicated by several factors: variable preservation; climate change during the period that separates deposition at the two sites; potential differences in the season of carbonate formation in soils and lakes; and uncertainty in environmental lapse rates. We examine how each of these factors affects our paleoelevation estimate. In addition, we outline an approach to explicitly correct for climate change and assess the sensitivities of our elevation estimate to uncertainties. This study provides an alternative approach for datasets that span long time intervals and/or compare to low-elevation sites that are not exactly the same age (e.g. Huntington et al., 2010, Lechler et al., 2013, Wolfe et al., 1998).

Section snippets

Nevada site (NV) and samples

We collected lacustrine carbonate samples from Member B of the Sheep Pass Formation type section (Fig. 2). Member B is Late Cretaceous to late Paleocene in age, based on biostratigraphy, palynology, detrital zircon U–Pb, and U–Pb dating of carbonate (Druschke et al., 2009a, Druschke et al., 2009b, Fouch, 1979, Good, 1987, Swain, 1999). Using this chronology, our samples range in age from 66.7 to 59.9 Ma (Snell, 2011). Member B comprises dominantly tan to light brown microbial limestone beds (

Accounting for climate change

To account for effects of secular climate change on our paleoelevation estimates, we must address the direction(s) and magnitude of climate change that occurred during the 5.5 m.y. gap between the NV and UT sites. Ideally, we would evaluate this from high-resolution Campanian to Maastrichtian records from the western Cordillera, WIS and coastal Pacific Ocean (off the North American coast) – the regions closest to our two sampling sites. Such records do not exist, however, so we use benthic

Conclusions

Our study suggests that the paleoelevation of central Nevada during the Late Cretaceous was 2 km. Uncertainties associated with our dataset allow this to be an overestimate, but require that our inferences about thermal lapse rates, the season or depth of formation of Sheep Pass carbonate, or the relationship of terrestrial temperature change relative to marine temperature change are incorrect. If our assumptions are confirmed by further studies, our data support interpretations of a high

Acknowledgments

We thank T. Wright for assistance in the field and B. Wernicke for helpful discussions. We also thank three anonymous reviewers for their critical and helpful comments and suggestions, which improved this manuscript. Funding for this study was provided by NSF Tectonics grant EAR-0838576 to P.L.K. and grants to J.M.E. from NSF.

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