Cenozoic Cooling Patterns from the Canadian Cordillera using the Uranium-Thorium-Helium Method

Date
2013-04-30
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Abstract
The Cenozoic cooling history of the Canadian Cordillera is important for understanding large-scale processes and relative importance of smaller geologic features. Our study uses the uranium-thorium-helium method, which provides a cooling history for upper crust (~2-6 km). Our data helps resolve near surface problems such as the amount and extent of overburden removed during the Cenozoic, the possible mechanisms to explain the loss of the thick overburden (i.e. tectonic, climate, erosion), and how our regional cooling history fits into the cooling histories we already have for the Cordillera. Using our data we estimated the amount of overburden removed from the Foreland Belt portion of our study, since the L. Paleocene, to be 5-9 km and did extend further west into the Cordillera. Using hanging wall and footwall relationships, we found that faulting, despite lying in the extensional regime in the current model did not control cooling.
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Geology
Citation
Bacque, D. (2013). Cenozoic Cooling Patterns from the Canadian Cordillera using the Uranium-Thorium-Helium Method (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/25240