The interplay of regional structure and emplacement mechanisms at the contact of the South Mountain Batholith, Nova Scotia: floor-down or wall-up?
In southern Nova Scotia, the Devonian South Mountain Batholith was emplaced into metasedimentary rocks of the Cambro-Ordovician Meguma Group at ca. 370 Ma. The contact of the eastern end of the South Mountain Batholith transects at a high angle the trace of subhorizontal, upright Acadian (mid-late Devonian) folds formed in the Meguma Group. At two locations, where the contact is well exposed, there are contrasting structures in the country rocks adjacent to Acadian anticlinoria and synclinoria, respectively. Regional folds are affected by ductile deformation where anticlinoria abut the batholith but are undisturbed at the synclinoria. At the anticlinorial contacts, the metasedimentary bedding youngs towards the granite, and granite side-down shear resulted in a belt in which bedding is transposed to a new contact-parallel fabric. Deflection of linear structures that were initially horizontal in the Acadian folds (e.g., intersection lineations) illustrates the granite side-down shear. The reorientation of ...