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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database

AAPG Bulletin

Abstract


Volume: 41 (1957)

Issue: 2. (February)

First Page: 354

Last Page: 354

Title: Reconnaissance Observations on Geology of Trinity Islands, Alaska: ABSTRACT

Author(s): C. E. Kirschner

Article Type: Meeting abstract

Abstract:

The Trinity Islands, Tugidak on the west and Sitkinak on the east, form the southwesterly extent of the Kodiak Islands group. Each island is approximately 5 miles wide by 20 miles long. The surface of Tugidak Island is a series of low wave-cut terraces maximum elevation 200 feet. Sitkinak Island comprises a group of hills on the east and west, maximum elevation 1,640 feet, separated by a valley enclosing Sitkinak tidal lagoon.

The bedrock of East Sitkinak Island is Cretaceous (?) marine epineritic bedded graywacke and siltstone complexly folded and faulted. West Sitkinak Island is Cretaceous (?) marine infraneritic thin-bedded siltstone and fine graywacke isoclinally folded and faulted. The thickness of these units is unknown; structural trends are northwest.

Sitkinak lagoon and valley lie in a northwest-trending graben in which about 4,000 feet of Eocene (?) continental to brackish marine conglomerate, sand, silt, and coal crop out.

The bedrock of Tugidak Island consists of Plio-Pleistocene soft mudstone and thick-bedded gray sands, which strike N. 45° E. and dip 5° NW.

The Cretaceous sediments were deposited in a northeast-trending mobile, extra-continental, geosyncline and were probably derived from a volcanic landmass on the southeast. Late Cretaceous or Laramide diastrophism brought to a close the Cretaceous sedimentation cycle. The Tertiary sediments were deposited in a similar less well developed geosyncline but had a northwesterly source. Intermittent orogenic uplift near the close of this cycle caused non-deposition or erosion of mid-Tertiary sediments. Late Tertiary diastrophism that closed the Tertiary cycle of sedimentation has continued to Recent time and includes differential orogenic movements, in part along major northeast-trending faults.

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