2015 GSA Annual Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, USA (1-4 November 2015)

Paper No. 9-3
Presentation Time: 8:35 AM

AN UNEXPLAINED PULSE OF LATE CRETACEOUS EXHUMATION IN NORTHERN NEW ENGLAND


AMIDON, William H., Geology Program, SUNY Plattsburgh, 101 Broad St., Plattsburgh, NY 12901, RODEN-TICE, Mary K., Center for Earth and Environmental Science, SUNY Plattsburgh, 101 Broad Street, Plattsburgh, NY 12901, ANDERSON, Alyssa J., School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University, 3708 Dogwood Creek Cove, Austin, TX 78746 and SHUSTER, David, Department of Earth and Planetary Science, 479 McCone Hall, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, wamidon@middlebury.edu

The steep relief of northern New England has long puzzled geomorphologists. Although it is suggestive of recent tectonic rejuvenation, roughly 200 million years has passed since the opening of the Atlantic. The timing of recent exhumation has proven difficult to constrain because the magnitude of Cenozoic unroofing is often insufficient to reset surface thermochronometers and associated sediments are not well preserved. This study attempts to better resolve the Mesozoic-Cenozoic exhumation history of the White Mountains (New Hampshire) by combining apatite fission track, (U-Th)/He, and 4He/3He thermochronology in a 700 m deep drill core from the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Forward (HeFTY) and inverse (QTQt) modeling of age-elevation profiles point to a period of accelerated exhumation from roughly 85 to 65 Ma. Cooling rates accelerated by a factor of 6-10 around this time, potentially translating to the removal of 2-3 km of overburden in the span of ~20 million years. The timing of this episode is in broad agreement with AFT cooling ages across major faults in the region, which also suggest late Cretaceous reactivation. However, an analysis of regional AFT ages suggests that not all of the uplift can be explained by extensional faulting and that dynamic surface uplift might have played a role. Although external forcing mechanisms remain unclear, the timing of this exhumation corresponds well to a reorganization of seafloor spreading in the North Atlantic and to the timing of alkaline volcanism in Iberia.