Provenance of Upper Cretaceous to Paleocene strata in the Alberta foreland basin using detrital zircon U-Pb geochronology and (U-Th)/He thermochronology double dating
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Flexural foreland basins hold sedimentary records of paleoenvironment and hinterland erosion, making them useful for reconstructing the evolution of orogenic systems. The Turonian–Coniacian Cardium to Paleocene Paskapoo formations have been described in terms of their sedimentary facies and paleoenvironments, but the relationship to fold-thrust belt shortening is contested. Geochronology and low-temperature thermochronology datasets allow us connect Alberta foreland basin strata to tectonic and eustatic events. Here, we present a 1780 meter measured stratigraphic section and new detrital zircon U-Pb geochronology ages and (U-Th)/He thermochronology (ZHe) dates from Turonian–Coniacian formations. Turonian–Campanian sandstones interrupt marine shales and yield ZHe date populations that young up-section (Cardium Fm, ~148 Ma and ~319 Ma; Marshybank Fm, ~124 and ~278 Ma; Chinook Mbr, ~74 and ~139 Ma), reflecting progressive erosion into the fold-thrust belt. U-Pb ages indicate a Proterozoic-Ordovician fold-thrust belt source in the Turonian, and a shift to a more easterly Devonian-Triassic fold-thrust belt source in the Coniacian–Campanian, corresponding to punctuated transpression in the distal fold-thrust belt. Campanian–Paleocene sandstones record deltaic–nonmarine environments and fold-thrust shortening known as the “Rundle Pulse.” These units share age spectra indicating a dominant Neoproterozoic–Ordovician fold-thrust source, supporting unroofing of new sources following proximal uplift. ZHe date populations become older moving up-section in the Maastrichtian–Paleocene (Coalspur, ~59 Ma and ~187 Ma; Paskapoo, ~152 and ~226 Ma), reflecting foreland basin cannibalization. Reconstruction of the Alberta foreland basin clarifies sedimentary responses to climate, distal pulses of transpression, and fold-thrust belt shortening.
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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 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| 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".