Post-Ophiolite Unconformity, Tilt Cove – Betts Cove Area, Newfoundland

• Published in: Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences
• Main Authors: Neale, E. R. W., Kean, B. F., Upadhyay, H. D.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Canadian Science Publishing 1975
• Subjects: General Earth and Planetary Sciences; Fleur de Lys; Betts Cove; Cape St. John; Tilt Cove; Snooks Arm; Newfoundland
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1139/e75-077; http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/pdf/10.1139/e75-077

Subaerial sediments and silicic and mafic lavas of the Cape St. John Group in northern Newfoundland, were originally interpreted as younger than the Betts Cove ophiolite suite and the Lower Ordovician (Arenig) Snooks Arm pillow lavas and oceanic sediments, but recently have been considered as part of the pre-Ordovician Fleur de Lys Supergroup and hence older than the Snooks Arm Group. The volcanic rocks that underlie the Cape St. John were reinterpreted as a pre-Snooks Arm oceanic foundation to the Fleur de Lys rocks.Our work reaffirms the original interpretation of the Cape St. John rocks as unconformably above the Lower Ordovician pillow lavas and ophiolites and we tentatively correlate them with the Springdale and Mic Mac Groups and other nearby Silurian (?) clastic/volcanic sequences of Old Red Sandstone equivalence. The Cape St. John Group grades northward and westward into polydeformed rocks, hence its re-establishment as a post-ophiolite assemblage bears on the history of deformation of adjacent groups.