The Laccolith-Stock Controversy: New Results from the Southern Henry Mountains, Utah
The laccolith-stock controversy: New results from the southern Henry Mountains, Utah MARIE D. JACKSON* Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland 21218 DAVID D. POLLARD Departments of Applied Earth Sciences and Geology, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305 ABSTRACT rule out the possibility of a stock at depth. At Mesa, Fig. 1). Gilbert inferred that the central Mount Hillers, paleomagnetic vectors indi- intrusions underlying the large domes are Domes of sedimentary strata at Mount cate that tongue-shaped sills and thin lacco- floored, mushroom-shaped laccoliths (Fig. 3). Holmes, Mount Ellsworth, and Mount Hillers liths overlying the central intrusion were More recently, C. B. Hunt (1953) inferred that in the southern Henry Mountains record suc- emplaced horizontally and were rotated dur- the central intrusions in the Henry Mountains cessive stages in the growth of shallow (3 to 4 ing doming through about 80° of dip. This are cylindrical stocks, surrounded by zones of km deep) magma chambers. Whether the in- sequence of events is not consistent with the shattered host rock. He postulated a process in trusions under these domes are laccoliths or emplacement of a stock and subsequent or which a narrow stock is injected vertically up- stocks has been the subject of controversy. contemporaneous lateral growth of sills and ward and then pushes aside and domes the sed- According to G. K. Gilbert, the central intru- minor laccoliths. Growth in diameter of a imentary strata as it grows in diameter. After the sions are direct analogues of much smaller, stock from about 300 m at Mount Holmes to stock is emplaced, tongue-shaped sills and lacco- floored intrusions, exposed on the flanks of nearly 3 km at Mount Hillers, as Hunt sug- liths are injected radially from the discordant the domes, that grew from sills by lifting and gested, should have been accompanied by sides of the stock (Fig.
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