DIGITAL GEOSPATIAL COMPILATION OF PALEOFLOW MEASUREMENTS FROM THE PALEOZOIC OUACHITA OROGEN, OKLAHOMA-ARKANSAS, USA

The Ouachita orogen, generated by the late Paleozoic subduction and collision of southern Laurentia with Gondwana during Pangea supercontinent assembly, formed the Ouachita fold-thrust-belt, Arkoma foreland basin, and Ozark uplift with complex sediment routing networks. Numerous paleocurrent and provenance studies document these drainage pathways over limited geographic or chronologic intervals, necessitating a digital geospatial compilation to gain a better understanding of the temporal variations in southern Laurentia sediment dispersal. For this reason, this report gathered 9,958 paleoflow indicators plotted as 665 unidirectional and bidirectional means from a variety of sedimentary bedform types throughout eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas with Ordovician-Pennsylvanian depositional ages compiled from 39 references (https://doi.org/10.5066/P9SVUS62). This dataset indicates the Mazarn Shale to Savanna Formation, with Ordovician to Pennsylvanian (middle Desmoinesian) depositional ages, generally demonstrate southern and western paleocurrent measurements; whereas the Boggy to Vamoosa Formations, deposited during the Pennsylvanian (late Desmoinesian to Virgilian), reveal northern paleoflow indicators. Therefore, we interpret this provenance shift to record a paleodrainage network reorganization during the late Desmoinesian, where sediment sources that fed the Ouachita trough shifted from northern and eastern Laurentia to southern Gondwana terranes. These findings have important implications for understanding tectonic and climatic interactions in active foreland basins during supercontinent formation and their influence on the sedimentary record.