Provenance and Sediment-Dispersal System in Tectonically Active Rapidly Evolving Foreland Basin, Western Interior: ABSTRACT
The Upper Cretaceous Frontier Formation, along the mobile edge of the Western Interior foreland basin, is composed mainly of clastic sediments and was deposited during the initial Late Cretaceous transgressive-regressive phases of the Western Interior seaway across Wyoming. The formation contains many persistent bentonite beds and several sandstone packages in its lower part and a thin, lenticular lithic wacke-polymictic conglomerate association at its upper contact (Torchlight Sandstone Member). Abundant granule to cobble-sized clasts of andesite, granite, chert, and quartzite are set in a poorly sorted sand-to-granule grade volcaniclastic matrix. There is a lithologic continuity of this volcaniclastic unit across the Bighorn Mountains into the Powder River basin. A high-energy distributary complex of sizable areal extent is invoked for the deposition of this linear conglomerate facies. Geochemical investigations of the whole-rock andesite clasts and bentonite allowed more precise definition of character, tectonic setting, and evolutionary stages of sedimentary distributive provinces. Bentonites and andesites are strongly enriched in strontium and barium, but only mildly enriched in heavy rare earth elements and high field-strength elements. These analyzed rocks have trace element characteristics similar in a general way to those of typical orogenic volcanics; they show some significant differences in detail. Composition of volcaniclasts more » and paleocurrent data indicate a proximal sediment source for the extrabasinal detritus within the Frontier Formation. The possibility of a contribution from a Mesozoic volcanic center in the neighborhood of southwestern Montana is strongly favored. The products of this volcanism constitute an assemblage of deep crustal to mantle( ) derived rocks, and their composition record time-integrated enrichment in light over heavy rare earth elements. « less