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Science 12 January 1996:
Vol. 271. no. 5246, pp. 190 - 193
DOI: 10.1126/science.271.5246.190
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Reports

Origin of High Mountains in the Continents: The Southern Sierra Nevada

Brian Wernicke (1),  Robert Clayton,  Mihai Ducea,  Craig H. Jones,  Stephen Park,  Stan Ruppert,  Jason Saleeby,  J. Kent Snow,  Livia Squires,  Moritz Fliedner,  George Jiracek,  Randy Keller,  Simon Klemperer,  James Luetgert,  Peter Malin,  Kate Miller,  Walter Mooney,  Howard Oliver,  Robert Phinney

Active and passive seismic experiments show that the southern Sierra, despite standing 1.8 to 2.8 kilometers above its surroundings, is underlain by crust of similar seismic thickness, about 30 to 40 kilometers. Thermobarometry of xenolith suites and magnetotelluric profiles indicate that the upper mantle is eclogitic to depths of 60 kilometers beneath the western and central parts of the range, but little subcrustal lithosphere is present beneath the eastern High Sierra and adjacent Basin and Range. These and other data imply the crust of both the High Sierra and Basin and Range thinned by a factor of 2 since 20 million years ago, at odds with purported late Cenozoic regional uplift of some 2 kilometers.


B. Wernicke, R. Clayton, M. Ducea, J. Saleeby, J. K. Snow, L. Squires, Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences 170-25, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.
C. H. Jones, CIRES, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.
S. Park, Department of Earth Sciences, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521, USA.
S. Ruppert, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA 94550, USA.
M. Fliedner and S. Klemperer, Department of Geophysics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
G. Jiracek, Department of Geological Sciences, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA 92182, USA.
R. Keller and K. Miller, Department of Geological Sciences, University of Texas, El Paso, TX 79968, USA.
J. Luetgert, W. Mooney, H. Oliver, U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA.
P. Malin, Department of Geology, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA.
R. Phinney, Department of Geological and Geophysical Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
(1) To whom correspondence should be addressed.


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