Nature of thrusting along western flank of Bighorn Mountains, Wyoming

The northern portion of the Bighorn Mountains is characterized by opposed mountain-front thrusts, of which the southwest direction is dominant. Blind basement thrusts along the northeastern flank do not pierce the folded Paleozoic cover; whereas on the western flank, southwest-directed thrust segments expose Precambrian rocks along a 24-km (14-mi) extent. Field studies on the western flank show evidence of four major southwest-directed thrust segments delineated by tear-fault boundaries, which include from northwest to southeast: (1) the Five Springs thrust, a low-angle, out-of-the-syncline fault mainly involving the sedimentary sequence; (2) the Bear Creek thrust, a continuation of the Five Springs out-of-the-syncline fault; (3) the South Beaver Creek thrust, which juxtaposes Precambrian rocks against a tectonically thinned, overturned anticlinal limb of Mississippian through Jurassic rocks and which is inward from an out-of-the-syncline thrust involving little displacement of Jurassic formations; and (4) a mountain-front reentrant that coincides with the zone where the South Beaver Creek thrust continues beneath Paleozoic cover, causing the upper flexure of a double monocline. The central portion of the Bighorn Mountains is thrust eastward, whereas the northern portion is thrust southwestward with much less displacement. The segmented association of southwest-directed basement thrusts along the western flank of the northern more » Bighorns is indicative of the major transport direction for that portion of the Bighorn uplift. « less