Sedimentary Basin Development in Intraplate Settings, Colorado

This project is an investigation of the Pennsylvanian-Permian Central Colorado trough. This basin is one of several which formed up to 1,500 km cratonward from known plate boundaries. The north-south trending Central Colorado trough received clastic detritus shed off the Uncompahgre and Apashipa uplifts. The basin deposits consist of the marine Pennsylvanian Minturn Formation (~ 2,000 m thick) and the Pennsylvanian-Permian nonmarine Sangre de Cristo Formation (~ 4,000 m thick). These late Paleozoic basin deposits were deformed and uplifted during Laramide deformation (Late Cretaceous-Eocene) and Rio Grande rifting (Neogene), and are currently exposed in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of Colorado. The general questions to be addressed include: 1) What structural mechanisms were responsible for the development of Pennsylvanian-Permian basins? 2) Can analysis of basin-bounding structures be used to link uplift of the Uncompahgre and Apashipa highlands to the development of the Central Colorado trough? 3) What was the relationship between deposystems that filled the Central Colorado trough and the structural setting of the basin? 4) Do the petrofacies of this basin contain additional information about the uplift of the Uncompahgre and Apashipa highlands of the Ancestral Rocky Mountains?

Rick Hoy on the Sangre de Cristo Fm, south-central Colorado