Uplift of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and subsidence in the Cesar Rancheria valley: Rigid-beam pivot model

Abstract

The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (SNSM), the Central Cordillera since the latest Maastrichtian world's tallest coastal mountain, is a roughly Early Paleocene time with depositional systems triangular massif in northernmost Colombia with an migrating eastward to the Maracaibo lake (Villamil, impressive structural relief of approximately 12 km 1999). Northern South America can be interpreted as a that paradoxically shows a large Bouguer anomaly wide plate boundary zone where buoyancy of the high. Immediately southeast of the SNSM, and in Caribbean plate, as a result of its origin as an Pacifie structural continuity with it, the Cesar-Rancheria oceanic plateau (Kerr et al. , 1998), may have imposed Valley (CRV) preserves a thick sedimentary wedge of an oblique convergence vector to this wide plate Paleocene age. Here, we put forward a conceptual boundary zone, with oblique collision, rather than geodynamic model that attempts to explain the active subduction, as the driving mechanism along the creation of a sedimentary wedge next to, and margin (Montes, in press). Buoyancy of the Caribbean simultaneously with the uplift of a crustal block out of plate may additionally provide the mechanism for the isostatic equilibrium. We propose rotation of a rigid uplift of the SNSM and simultaneous creation of an continental plate along a horizontal axis uplifting the SNSM while opening accommodation space in the coal mine, an apparent conjugate of the Cerrej6n The northeastern SNSM preserves a thin veneer of mine, is located within a syncline in the southeastem gently , southeast-dipping Cretaceous sediments flank of the PR in Venezuela. The regional dip in both overlapping older unmetamorphosed and metamorphic areas is eastward -southeastward and northwest- rocks ranging in age from Precambrian to middle directed thrusting locally affects these deposits. Mesozoic (Tschanz et al., 1974) . The PR exposes Paleogeographie maps (Villamil, 1999) show the sedimentary and low-grade metamorphic rocks of