The Sauratown Mountains window is located in North Carolina and Virginia at the northeast end of the Inner Piedmont (Fig.l). The guidebook provides an introduction to the geology of the western end of the Sauratown Mountains window (Fig.2) and is based on detailed geologic mapping by Heyn (1984), McConnell (in progress), and myself, andongeochronologic studies conducted here during the 1980s by McConnell and others (1986, 1988) and by Fullagar and Butler (1980). The present studies were undertaken to determine the role of basement massifs in the mountain building process.
This field trip has the purpose of presenting some of the data and ideas from our recent work in the Sauratown Mountains and adjacent Piedmont. We believe that we have shown that the insights of Bryant and Reed from a SEGSA 1968 field trip are correct, that the Brevard fault is unrelated to the Sauratown Mountains, the Stony Ridge fault is a relatively minor structure - despite the impressive cataclasite that occurs along it -- and that the Inner Piedmont stratigraphy is the same as that in the Blue Ridge and. probably the Smith River allochthon. Major faults exist here, but they have different ages determined by their relationships to the metamorphic peak, and they juxtapose contrasting stratigraphic packages or basement units.
The four papers in this guidebook were written independently and represent somewhat divergent views on the interpretation of details of the structure of the Sauratown Mountains. We decided to present our conclusions in this form so that questions could be asked during the field trip that might bring out the reasons for the differences in interpretations. Edited by Robert D. Hatcher, Jr., 1988. 104 pages. Will not include the 2 plates.
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