Tectonics and Structural Geology

TS Must-Read – England and Molnar (1990) Surface uplift, uplift of rocks, and exhumation of rocks

The Must-read team September 20, 2021

With this paper, England and Molnar (1990) shed light on the recurrent confusion in the uses of terms ‘uplift’ and ‘exhumation’. The main focus is to clarify the difference between surface uplift, uplift of rocks, and exhumation by explaining the differences and the relations between these processes (Fig. 1). The manuscript also illustrates how other processes, such as changes in climate, can be m ...[Read More]

TS Must-Read – Dahlen (1990) Critical Taper Model Of Fold-and-thrust Belts And Accretionary Wedges

The Must-read team September 13, 2021

Dahlen 1990‘s paper presents a synthesis of all theoretical work on accretionary wedges that had begun more than a decade earlier, with the fold and thrust belts research of Elliott (1976), Chapple (1978), and model by Davis et al., (1983). Dahlen expanded previous views with a more sophisticated treatment of pore-fluid pressure using volume-averaged Stokes-equations for both solids and flui ...[Read More]

TS Must-Read – Lister and Davis (1989) The origin of metamorphic core complexes and detachment faults formed during Tertiary continental extension in the northern Colorado River region, USA

The Must-read team September 6, 2021

Lister and Davis (1989) is a seminal article for core complexes and detachment faults, cited well over a thousand times. The authors describe geometry and kinematics of core complexes, cropping out in the USA, which result from lithosphere extension. The paper carefully describes the main detachment fault separating lower plate from upper extending plate and discusses the role of granitoid intrusi ...[Read More]

TS Must-Read – Sylvester (1988) Strike-slip faults

The Must-read team June 30, 2021

Strike-slip faults by Arthur Sylvester (1988) is a must-read paper for anyone, and more so for those who want to understand the mechanisms of strike-slip faulting. Although it mostly refers to the San Andreas fault, the most studied strike-slip fault at the time (and possibly to date), the contribution is a comprehensive review of the state of the art about strike-slip faults in general. Sylvester ...[Read More]

TS Must-read – Dewey (1988) Extensional collapse of orogens

The Must-read team June 25, 2021

After building orogens with Dewey and Bird (1970) and extending them during building with Platt (1986), Dewey (1988) explores the lifetime of orogens in their last breath: their extensional collapse. Simple considerations on how to form a normally-thick continental crust (30-40 km) from a thickened continental domain (50-60 km) indicate that erosion of the topography alone is far from being suffic ...[Read More]

TS Must-Read – Molnar and Lyon-Caen (1988): Some simple physical aspects of the support, structure and evolution of mountain belts

The Must-read team June 2, 2021

In 1988 Peter Molnar and Hélène Lyon-Caen published their “Must-Read” paper on the support, structure and evolution of mountain belts. It is an article that touches on some core issues of plate tectonics by looking at two types of forces that resist mountain building, using key observations from Asian and American mountain chains. They name the first force “mechanical strength”, and to approximate ...[Read More]

TS Must-Read – Platt (1986): Dynamics of orogenic wedges and the uplift of high-pressure metamorphic rocks

The Must-read team May 12, 2021

Orogens are the locus of intense deformation and metamorphism, mainly caused by convergent tectonics and burial. Yet, deeply buried rocks – metamorphosed at high pressure (HP) – are customarily met at the surface, even in “recent” systems such as the Alps. The long-standing question is naturally “how are these rocks brought back to the surface?” At the time John Platt wrote his manuscr ...[Read More]

TS Must-Read – Armijo et al. (1986) Quaternary extension in southern Tibet: field observations and tectonic implications

The Must-read team April 13, 2021

This contribution is a very detailed field report of the Sino-French expedition in eastern Tibet that took place in 1980-1982. Armijo and coauthors accurately analyse the different tectonic styles present in the north and south of the Yarlung-Zangbo Suture Zone, frequently defined as the “chord” joining the eastern and western syntaxes of the Himalayan orogen (Fig. 1). North of the chord, strike-s ...[Read More]

TS Must-Read – Lister and Snoke (1984) S-C Mylonites

The Must-read team March 29, 2021

Following the impact of the global plate kinematics revolution, researchers in the 70s and 80s made significant efforts to compare records of deformed rocks in outcrops to large-scale deformation and kinematics. By publishing “S-C Mylonites” 1984, Gordon A. Lister and Arthur W. Snoke gave a step forward for the TS community. The paper contributed to transitioning from a strain-dominated framework ...[Read More]

TS Must-Read – Davis et al. (1983) Mechanics of Fold-and-Thrust Belts and Accretionary Wedges

The Must-read team March 12, 2021

The establishment of plate tectonics in the 1960s triggered a reappraisal of the development of mountain belts and facilitated the physics-based understanding of mountain building processes. Many models for mountain building were, however, mostly conceptual, and there was no appropriate theory that described the first-order mechanics of mountain belts. In 1983, this gap was – at least partially – ...[Read More]