The geology and structure of the Hare Bay Allochton at Quirpon Island, northern Newfoundland

• Main Author: Woodworth-Lynas, C. M. T.
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Memorial University of Newfoundland 1982
• Subjects: Goose Tickle; Maiden Point; Quirpon; Quirpon Island; Tickle; White Hills; Newfoundland
• Online Access: https://research.library.mun.ca/6925/; https://research.library.mun.ca/6925/1/CTMWoodWorth-Lynas.pdf; https://research.library.mun.ca/6925/3/CTMWoodWorth-Lynas.pdf

The rocks on Quirpon Island represent a well exposed cross section through the lower transported slices of the Hare Bay Allochthon and the uppermost parts of the autochthon. This thesis examines in detail the structural geometry of a part of the Hare Bay Allochthon. Its purpose is to analyze in detail the deformational and metamorphic histories of the individual thrust slices and of the uppermost autochthon in order to correlate these histories as far as possible. Detailed field work reveals a reversed metamorphic gradient. Also, structural complexity and the numbers of generations of structures increases in higher slices. The highest slice at Quirpon, the retrogressed, mylonitic, actinolite greenschists of the Goose Cove Schist, rests above the sedimentary and volcanic rocks of the Maiden Point Formation to which heat was transferred from the cooling greenschists causing pervasive lower greenschist facies metamorphism. Much of the underlying middle Ordovician Goose Tickle Formation flysch, previously believed to be entirely autochthonous throughout the Hare Bay area, occurs as discrete, detached slivers within the Maiden Point Formation. Large scale, isoclinal, precleavage folds have been identified in both of these formations and are syn-emplacement in age. A well defined magnetic anomaly immediately east of Quirpon Island may indicate the presence of an outlier of ophiolite of the White Hills Peridotite, the highest structural slice in the Hare Bay Allochthon.