Is the Southern Uplands of Scotland really an accretionary prism?

We argue that there is little which demands the accretionary prism model for the widespread Silurian rocks of the Southern Uplands of Scotland (and Ireland). With new data from Ireland, we reinterpret these rocks as the turbidite fill of a successor basin that formed after the subduction of Iapetus...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geology (Boulder) 1986-04, Vol.14 (4), p.354-357
Main Authors: Murphy, F C, Hutton, D H W
Format: Article
Language:English
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:We argue that there is little which demands the accretionary prism model for the widespread Silurian rocks of the Southern Uplands of Scotland (and Ireland). With new data from Ireland, we reinterpret these rocks as the turbidite fill of a successor basin that formed after the subduction of Iapetus oceanic crust finally stopped at the end of the Ordovician. The structure of the basin is a sinistral transcurrent imbricate stack, the result of oblique terminal collision of Cadomia with Laurasia at the end of the Silurian.
ISSN:0091-7613
DOI:10.1130/0091-7613(1986)142.0.CO;2