Cratonic basins as effective sediment barriers in continent-scale sediment routing systems of Paleozoic North America.

ABSTRACT: Provenance studies demonstrate the important control of plate boundary mountain building on continental sediment routing systems. Less well understood is if subsidence and uplift in cratons also has the potential to affect the organization of sediment routing systems on continental scales. New detrital zircon provenance data from the Michigan Basin in the Midcontinent of North America preserve evidence of intrabasin provenance heterogeneity in Cambrian, Ordovician, and middle Devonian strata. These results suggest that cratonic basins serve as effective sediment barriers that prevent mixing within and across basins from 10 to 100 s of millions of years. Internal sediment mixing, sorting, and dispersal may be achieved by a combination of sedimentary processes and inherited low relief topogr

SUBMITTER: Stevens Goddard AL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10333332 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature