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Mesozoic Tectonic Evolution Of The Tiefort Mountains, Ne Mojave Desert, Ca, Kirk A. Stephens

WWU Graduate School Collection

Detailed geologic mapping, petrologic and structural analyses, and U-Pb dating in the Tiefort Mountains, northern Mojave Desert, California, provide constraints on Paleozoic paleogeography and Mesozoic intra-arc tectonics. Geologic mapping in the Tiefort Mountains was used to identify metasedimentary, metaplutonic, and undeformed plutonic rocks. The metasedimentary rocks consist primarily of quartzose schists and gneisses that are correlated with the late-Precambrian Cordilleran miogeoclinal-cratonal sequence of the Johnnie Formation, Stirling Quartzite, and Wood Canyon Formation. Recognition of Precambrian augen gneiss and metasedimentary rocks with miogeoclinal protoliths provides new data on the location of the cratonal-miogeoclinal and miogeoclinal/eugeoclinal paleogeographic boundaries in the Mojave Desert. …