Rocky Mountain (66th Annual) and Cordilleran (110th Annual) Joint Meeting (19–21 May 2014)

Paper No. 2
Presentation Time: 8:00 AM-5:00 PM

TONALITIC MAGMATISM, EXHUMATION, AND ROTATION ALONG THE BAKER-OLDS FERRY TERRANE BOUNDARY, BLUE MOUNTAINS, EASTERN OREGON


MACHO, Alexandra S.1, GASCHNIG, Richard M.2, KELSO, Paul3, ALBEE, Ryan D.3, FAYON, Annia4, VERVOORT, Jeff5, SCHMITZ, Mark6 and TIKOFF, Basil7, (1)Department of Geoscience, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1215 W Dayton St, Madison, WI 53715, (2)Department of Geology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, (3)Department of Geology and Physics, Lake Superior State University, 650 W. Easterday Ave, Sault Ste. Marie, MI 49783, (4)Department of Earth Sciences, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, (5)School of the Environment, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164, (6)Department of Geosciences, Boise State University, 1910 University Drive, Boise, ID 83725, (7)Department of Geoscience, University of Wisconsin, 1215 W Dayton St, Madison, WI 53706, allie.macho@gmail.com

A series of four tonalitic plutons intrude on or near the Baker-Olds Ferry terrane boundary in the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon. We studied these plutons to help constrain the geological history of the Blue Mountains within the footprint of the IDOR EarthScope project. These plutons have been inferred to be similar in both composition and age to plutons affected by the Salmon River suture zone along the arc-continent boundary; here we explore the different exhumation history recorded in these two areas.

CA-ID-TIMS U-Pb zircon dating of pluton emplacement reveals a younging trend from SW to NE: Tureman Ranch (129.36 ± 0.06 Ma), Amelia (125.50 ± 0.08 Ma), Pedro Mountain (124.84 ± 0.07 Ma), and Lookout Mountain (123.84 ± 0.04 Ma). Geochemical analyses indicate that the plutons were sourced from mantle-derived and crustal melts of the juvenile accreted arc terranes. Hornblende geobarometry data are consistent with relatively shallow (< 3 kbar) emplacement depths. Ongoing thermochronological studies (40Ar/39Ar on hornblende and biotite and (U-Th)/He on zircon) will provide timing constraints on the exhumation of these plutons relative to similarly aged plutons associated with the Salmon River suture zone. Preliminary paleomagnetic results from two of these plutons indicate that the Blue Mountain terranes may have undergone significant vertical axis rotation since ~120 Ma. Overall, the age of plutonism in eastern Oregon is coeval with high-grade metamorphism and plutonism in the Salmon River suture zone, although the subsequent history appears to differ from adjacent cratonic North America.