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The British Caledonides: interpretations from Cenozoic analogues

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

A. H. G. Mitchell
A. H. G. Mitchell
Affiliation:
C/o U.N.D.P., P.O. Box 7285 ADC, M.I.A. Road, Metro Manila, Philippines
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Abstract

Recent interpretations of Cenozoic arc systems and collision belts facilitate reinterpretation of some aspects of British Caledonide evolution. End-Cambrian ‘Grampian’ collision of the passive ‘Dalradian’ foreland following southeastwards subduction beneath an island arc was accompanied by initiation of the Highland Boundary Fault as a high-angle south-directed oblique-slip thrust. Mid-Ordovician to early Devonian northwestward oblique subduction of the Iapetus Ocean beneath the Grampian orogen resulted in a continental margin magmatic arc, back-arc thrusting and development of an accretionary prism, while southeastward subduction led to arc magmatism and back-arc extension followed by initiation of the Rheic Ocean as a back-arc marginal basin; this syn-subduction N–S asymmetry of the Iapetus Ocean margins was analogous to the E–W asymmetry of the modern Pacific. Closure of Iapetus was diachronous, earlier in the northeast: during end-Silurian collision the southern Caledonides behaved as a passive foreland; post-collision foreland thrusting resulted in deposition and deformation of Lower Old Red Sandstone foreland basin deposits in Wales, and probably in northwest-directed back-thrusting in the region of the Longford-Down accretionary prism. Subsequent dextral movement in the suture zone juxtaposed the southern Caledonides with Scotland and northern Ireland, beneath which northwestward subduction had continued into the early Devonian.

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Geological Magazine , Volume 121 , Issue 1 , January 1984, pp. 35 - 46
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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