STRUCTURAL EVOLUTION ALONG A MAJOR APPALACHIAN SALIENT-RECESS JUNCTION RESULTING FROM OBLIQUE COLLISIONAL CONVERGENCE ACROSS A CONTINENTAL MARGIN TRANSFORM FAULT: PART 2- KINEMATIC AND MECHANICAL EXPLANATION

Many structural and stratigraphic contrasts occur across the Cartersville Transverse Zone (CTZ) in the Georgia Appalachians, extending across the entire width of the native Laurentian segment that experienced Appalachian deformation, suggesting the presence of basic mechanical differences across CTZ. These thrust sheets have been translated NW to varying distances, and the fact that contrasts occur in the most outboard parts of Laurentia implies that the locus of this mechanical difference was to the SE of the current location of the CTZ. Numerous observations support the hypothesis that an initial, right lateral, continental margin transfer fault (separating the Alabama continental promontory and the Tennessee continental embayment) that subsequently transitioned into a left-lateral, oblique ramp is responsible for contrasts along the CTZ. 1)The Neoproterozoic Ocoee rift basin is found only within the outboard part of the Tennessee salient (TS). 2)The level of detachment of the Talladega-Cartersville-Great Smokey fault changes abruptly and dramatically across the CTZ on the scale of a continental margin transfer fault. 3) A contrast in structural style between the large-scale isoclinal folding in the Blue Ridge (BR) and the absence of these structures in the Talladega belt implies a significant rheological contrast across the CTZ during syn-metamorphic deformation. 4)Deflection of metamorphic isograds indicates that rocks N of the CTZ have been brought up from significantly greater depths relative to similar units SW of the CTZ. 5)Mafic meta-igneous rocks can be found throughout much of the sequence in the BR (N of the CTZ) while equivalent units south of the CTZ do not contain a meta-igneous suite implying that the TS which formed above a lower plate rifted margin contained a thinner crust more accessible to mafic magmas than the Alabama recess. 6)The late-stage Allatoona Pass fault exists as an escape zone accommodating the northeast displacement of the Corbin basement massif and its cover sequence as it is decoupled at the upper corner of the ramp. 7)The highly oblique axial trace of the regional Cartersville cross-antiform likely exists as an accommodation structure from the displacement of upper and lower detachment flats across an oblique ramp. The evolution of this regional structure is explained kinematically and mechanically.