Extensional Tectonics in the Basin and Range Provi nce Between the Southern Sierra Nevada and the Col orado Plateau: The Basin and Range Province of Sou

Published by the American Geophysical Union as part of the Field Trip Guidebooks Series, Volume 138.

The purpose of this field trip is to examine the tectonic history of one of the planet's best-exposed intracontinental rifts, the Basin and Range province. The trip is run as a transect at the latitude of Las Vegas, Nevada, where the province is relatively narrow (about 360 km measured east-west). While the emphasis of the trip is on Cenozoic extensional tectonics, much of the discussion will center on pre-Cenozoic geology, as the pre-extensional geological framework must be thoroughly understood in order to piece together the extensional history. Because the amount of crustal pull-apart is large (about 250 km oriented west-northwest) fragments of crust preserved in widely separated basin ranges are similar to one another, and in a number of cases pre-extension geologic features within these fragments provide the basis for accurate tectonic reconstructions.