INCOMPLETE AND MISSING RECORD IN THE GEOLOGY OF THE TENNESSEE WESTERN BLUE RIDGE

The Ocoee Series, particularly the Walden Creek Group and the Great Smoky Group are broadly equivalent in age. These groups, including the underlying Snowbird Group, partly overlie Grenvillian basement and contain lithic fragments and minerals from the Grenvillian basement rocks, and from sediments that developed on the flanks of the basin. Whether the Ocoee Series are latest Precambrian or Silurian and younger, the difference in age between the Ocoee turbidite deposits and the basin boundary is vast and is better explained by a scenario that involves uplift and denudational faulting for creating the depositional basin. The controversy about the age of the Ocoee Series may be used to popularize geologic education. For example, Hutton's work, which included focusing attention on "missing record" that represents vast time, helped nullify the idea of placing a 4004 BC limit for the origin of the Earth. What exact significance is to be attributed to rocks, which previously were thought to be Precambrian, but which contain Silurian or younger fossils at least in the extreme western portion of the series where metamorphism is the least? Are these Silurian or younger rocks to be diagnosed as "available record" and are they then to be used to understand the geologic history of the Blue Ridge? Are there alternative interpretations other than denying that the described fossils are Silurian and younger, or that the fossil-bearing rocks are sinkhole deposits, both of which are unlikely scenarios? The simplest solution to the age controversy might be to consider the entire Ocoee Series minus the Sandsuck Formation as being Silurian and younger in age as proposed by those who described the fossil findings. If so, we have to modify the meanings of klippe, window, and also propose that thrust faults in the western Blue Ridge place younger rocks over older ones more than had been recognized previously?