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  6. Intracontinental rifting and inversion: Missour Basin and Atlas Mountains, Morocco

Intracontinental rifting and inversion: Missour Basin and Atlas Mountains, Morocco

File(s)
Beauchamp1996_Abstract&Figure.pdf (254.09 KB)
Permanent Link(s)
https://hdl.handle.net/1813/5270
Collections
Middle East and North Africa Region Projects
Prof. Muawia Barazangi
Author
Beauchamp, W.
Barazangi, M.
Demnati, A.
El Alji, M.
Abstract

The intracontinental High and Middle Atlas mountain belts in Morocco intersect to form the southern and western margins of the Missour Basin, an intermontane basin formed as a result of the uplift and inversion of the Mesozoic Atlas paleorifts. These rifts were areas where the crust was greatly attenuated and more subject to deformation in response to nearby plate boundary tectonics. Data from observations based on seismic reflection profiles and wells over the Missour basin for hydrocarbon exploration and field mapping were used to understand the basin evolution, structural styles, and inversion timing of the nearby Atlas Mountains. Hercynian and Mesozoic normal faults were reactivated into high-angle reverse and thrust faults in the Mesozoic during the Jurassic, early Cretaceous (early Alpine phase), and the Paleogene (late Alpine phase). The reactivation of synrift normal faults of the paleo-Atlas rifts inverted previous half grabens into anticlinal structures, with the axis of the half graben centered below the axis of the inverted anticline. The resulting inverted fold geometries are controlled by the geometries of the extensional planar or listric faults.

Description
An edited version of this paper was published by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG). Copyright 1996, AAPG.
See also:
http://www.aapg.org/bulletin/index.cfm;
http://atlas.geo.cornell.edu/morocco/publications/beauchamp1996.htm
Date Issued
1996
Publisher
American Association of Petroleum Geologists
Keywords
Morocco
•
Atlas Mountains
•
Missour Basin
•
Reflection seismology
•
Intramountain sedimentary basin
Previously Published as
AAPG Bulletin, vol. 80, p. 1459-1482, 1996
ISSN
0149-1423
Type
periodical

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