A tectonic model for the Transcontinental Arch: Progressive migration of a Laurentian drainage divide during the Neoproterozoic–Cambrian Sauk Transgression
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract A widespread provenance shift recorded by passive margin strata of western Laurentia, from predominant Stenian (1.2–1.0 Ga) detrital zircon age components to their absence, occurred during the Neoproterozoic–Cambrian Sauk transgression and is commonly used as a ca. 540 Ma chronostratigraphic marker throughout the west/south‐western United States. However, in Neoproterozoic–Cambrian strata of this region, we identify a probable shift from distal to more proximal Stenian‐age zircon sources before a diachronous loss of Stenian detrital zircon age components. We suggest these provenance patterns reflect progressive subsidence of the passive margins surrounding Laurentia and concomitant relative uplift of the Transcontinental Arch, a broad and segmented northeast–southwest trending topographic high across the Laurentian midcontinent possibly due to lithospheric flexure. The Transcontinental Arch segments align with transverse rift structures of the Neoproterozoic–Cambrian Iapetan margin and the Mesoproterozoic Midcontinent Rift, perhaps reflecting rejuvenation of midcontinent lithospheric weaknesses during the Sauk transgression and final Rodinia breakup.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".