Today we get to look at some spectacular folds from Namibia’s Zerrissene turbidite system, courtesy of my friend Jay Kaufman of the University of Maryland, College Park. He scanned some of his old slides to share some on-the-ground visions of this incredible place with us:
That’s an overturned syncline. The upper left limb of that fold has been tectonically flipped over. The characteristic features of deformation in this area is the westward-vergence of the folds and the thinning of the upright limbs of the folds (bottom right in all four of these images). The view in all these photos is roughly toward the south.
Note the parasitic small-scale folds in the core of this one:
(Also, did you catch the small-offset ~vertical fault at lower left?)
Thanks for sharing, Jay – these are awesome!
Spectacular fold. Are these low-grade metamorphic Archean rx?
The photo showing “small-scale parasitic folds” illustrates a couple of expected features in folded beds: wavelength can be a function of layer thickness, and the thicker layers exert a dominant wavelength in the fold.
Yes, well noted.