Recently published U.S. Geological Survey gravity and magnetic maps constitute powerful tools for interpreting the tectonic nature and history of the northern part of the Mississippi embayment. Perhaps the most striking feature of the maps is a set of alternating, roughly coincident gravity and magnetic anomalies that bear northeastward and extend from the northwestern edge of the embayment to Alabama. Positive anomalies in this set are viewed, using the model of McKensie, as zones of stretching, thinning, and subsidence of the continental lithosphere. Gradients between positive and negative anomalies may mark the position of listric faults, which blocked out grabens and horsts within the basement rocks, forming a low-relief crustal mosaic.

This mosaic was jostled by the Ouachita collision during the Late Pennsylvanian. A horst on the northwestern flank of the embayment was pushed slightly northeastward and uplifted at its northeastern end to form the Pascola arch. Potential field maps provide no evidence that the Pascola arch connected the Ozark and Nashville domes. Older structures athwart the region trend of the mosaic, such as the Ste. Genevieve and Rough Creek faults, were reactivated as thrust faults up on their southern sides. In the Early Permian, alkalic dikes were intruded in the region of the Illinois Mineral District providing the earliest evidence of a lens of low velocity mantle rock beneath the embayment. Radiometric dates suggest alkalic igneous activity peaked in the Cretaceous.

In this scenario, the Reelfoot region evolved from a broad complex graben to a true rift during the late Paleozoic. Mesozoic igneous events and present seismicity suggest that the Reelfoot is not a dying rift; it is instead being born.

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