The traditional tectonic framework of northern and central Alaska, based on Payne's pioneering study of Mesozoic and Cenozoic history, is inadequate to accommodate new evidence of older tectonic events, revised general models arising from plate tectonics, and the current plethora of hypotheses, conflicting, concerning Arctic tectonics. New concepts must accommodate evidence suggesting (a) Precambrian eugeosynclinal terranes and subsequent fold belts in Romanzof Mountains, Seward Peninsula, Yukon-Tanana Upland, and central Alaska Range; (b) stable though negative conditions throughout Paleozoic time in Seward Peninsula and Yukon-Porcupine area; (c) early Paleozoic eugeosynclinal terranes and fold belts in and north of the Brooks Range, and thin carbonates and graptolitic s ales in a zone parallel with, and southeast of, Payne's Ruby geanticline; (d) middle and late Paleozoic miogeosynclinal and south-directed clastic wedge deposition in Brooks Range; (e) successive initiation of later eugeosynclinal terranes between the Brooks and Alaska Ranges, from the Kuskokwim area during the late Paleozoic (largely sedimentary) northward to the Koyukuk area in early Mesozoic (largely volcanic), and subsequent northward progression of Cretaceous and Tertiary centers of clastic deposition across Brooks Range and North Slope; (f) disparity between patterns of Precambrian and Paleozoic elements of Alaska and those of the cordilleran tectonic regime, and possibility that Mesozoic and Cenozoic tectonic framework is inherited; and (g) gross translation of terranes in the Mes zoic and afterward, northwestward on Tintina fault and Livengood thrust zone, northeastward along Kaltag fault, Yukon-Porcupine lineament and thrusts in eastern Brooks Range, northward throughout the Brooks Range and Foothills thrust belt, eastward on thrusts in western Koyukuk area, and northward and eastward in Collier thrust belt on Seward Peninsula, as well as dislocation in Paleozoic time, evidenced by pre-Mississippian thrusting in the Romanzof Mountains.

End_of_Article - Last_Page 2493------------