The southern Wyoming Laramide basin: implications for long-term tectonic control on uplift and subsidence

Abstract

An evolving tectonic setting during the Late Cretaceous and Paleocene drove the dramatic transformation of southern Wyoming from a broad marine shelf setting to a series of lacustrine basins. Early dominant control of depositional patterns by flexural tectonics gave way to control by dynamic topography and Laramide-style deformation. The southern Wyoming region demonstrates how progressive partitioning by Laramide movements exerted increasingly dominant control on regional depositional patterns. It did this by creating a long-lived, Laramide uplift-bounded fluvial catchment and basin largely controlled by Laramide-driven subsidence. The Rock Springs and Rawlins uplifts underpinned the basin and exerted their influence in the subsurface. Episodes of Laramide-driven subsidence produced a series of embayments, including the large Rusty–Allen Ridge embayment and the very large deepwater Lewis embayment. The degree of eustatic control in the region would have been greatest at short time scales in the low coastal–shallow-marine settings, causing shoreline oscillations. Several long transgressive episodes followed relatively punctuated progradational periods of coastal-plain construction when supply was generally high from the thrust belt and surrounding uplifts. Laramide activity in the Paleocene led to enclosure of the fluvial basin and the development of a series of smaller marine embayments that mark the end of influence in the region by open and coastal marine processes.