Mélanges and olistostromes in the Puerto Plata area (northern Dominican Republic) as a record of subduction and collisional processes between the Caribbean and North-American plates

Mechanisms and processes of stratal disruption and mixing in the development of mélanges and broken formations: Redefining and classifying mélanges

“…2, and Fig. 2E; e.g., Dilek et al, 1999;Remitti et al, 2011;Hernaiz Huerta et al, 2012;Ogata et al, 2012aOgata et al, , 2012b of ancient, submarine collisional orogens as in the "AlpineHimalayan" chains (e.g., Abbate et al, 1970;Smith et al, 1979;Liu and Einsele, 1996;Burg et al, 2008), and modern ones as in the Gela Nappe in the Sicily Channel (Tricardi and Argnani, 1990;Minisini et al, 2009) and Adriatic Sea (Tricardi et al, 2004;Argnani et al, 2011). Their occurrence in exhumed accretionary wedge and in subduction settings (Type 4a in Tab.…”

The Imbert Formation of northern Hispaniola: a tectono-sedimentary record of arc-continent collision and ophiolite emplacement in the northern Caribbean subduction-accretionary prism

“…Unlike the well-studied El Mamey Group (de Zoeten andMann, 1991, 1999), there are various interpretations of the origin and meaning of the Imbert Fm, as well as of its spatial and temporal relationships with other sedimentary units. The Imbert Fm has been interpreted as a Paleocene-lower Eocene, deep-marine sedimentary unit deposited in the outer forearc-trench setting, presumably over the underlying Puerto Plata complex (Nagle, 1979;Pindell and Draper, 1991), an orogenic mélange originally deposited as trench-fill sediments (Pindell, 1985), an accretionary (subduction) complex formed above a SW-dipping subduction zone (Bowin and Nagle, 1982;Bourgois et al, 1982), and a sedimentary record of the cessation of subduction-related magmatism as result of the early oblique collision of the Caribbean plate with the Bahama Platform in the middle Eocene (Draper et al, 1994;de Zoeten and Mann, 1999;Hernáiz-Huerta et al, 2012).…”

“…Pindell and Draper (1991) describe in detail the Imbert Fm and propose that it is coeval or slightly older than an informal unit composed of serpentinitic-rich breccias, and the lower-to-middle Eocene shallow-water limestones of the La Isla Fm, which typically contains clasts of similar serpentinites. The serpentinitic breccias are recently included at the base, and interbedded with, the lower stratigraphic section of the San Marcos Fm (Hernáiz-Huerta et al, 2012), which is a mud-matrix mélange. However, this interpretation disagrees with the presence of middle Eocene to middle Miocene faunas in sedimentary blocks included in the San Marcos Fm (Bourgeois et al, 1982;Hernáiz-Huerta, 2010;Monthel, 2010), as well as the Miocene age of the mudstone matrix (Monthel, 2010;Suárez-Rodríguez et al, 2013.…”

“…However, this interpretation disagrees with the presence of middle Eocene to middle Miocene faunas in sedimentary blocks included in the San Marcos Fm (Bourgeois et al, 1982;Hernáiz-Huerta, 2010;Monthel, 2010), as well as the Miocene age of the mudstone matrix (Monthel, 2010;Suárez-Rodríguez et al, 2013. For Pindell and Draper (1991) and Hernáiz-Huerta et al (2012), the Imbert Fm records the early collision of the Caribbean island arc with the Bahamas Platform. This is consistent with the middle to upper Eocene folding and uplift tectonic event described in the Septentrional Cordillera by Mann et al (1991) and de Zoeten and Mann (1999), as well as in Puerto Rico (Láo Dávila et al, 2012), Haiti and southwestern Cuba (Calais et al, 1992).…”

Cretaceous-Paleogene thrust emplacement of serpentinite in southwestern Puerto Rico

“…In addition, diapirism of serpentinite mud, as observed in the forearc region near the Marianas Trench (Fryer et al, 1985;Oakley et al, 2007), or a combination of obduction and diapirism (Page et al, 1999) may result in emplacement of serpentinite. The sedimentary emplacement of serpentinite is also recognized in ancient deposits and recent forearc mud volcanoes (Lockwood, 1972;Phipps, 1984;Fryer et al, 2000;Hernaiz Huerta et al, 2011;Wakabayashi, 2011). Despite the formulation of these models, the emplacement mechanism of many serpentinite bodies remains controversial.…”