Meeting summary: Caribbean and Central America Realms of the Southern
Cordillera
GSA Cordillera Section Meeting, Puerto Vallarta Mexico April 1-3, 2003
Robert Rogers (UTIG) and Jeff Marshall (Cal Poly Pomona) -session chairs

In a well attended session, researchers presented results that spanned
from Tobago to southern Mexico. Session highlights include: 1) the first
documentation of ultra-high pressure (2.8 to 3.5 Gpa) garnet peridotite
from the Dominican Republic (Abbott, et al., 2003) 2) documentation of
two belts of high-pressure serpentinites of 65-77 Ma and 116-125 Ma
juxtaposed in Guatemala (Sisson et al., 2003), 3) a model of the Neogene
evolution of the Costa Rican Arc (Gans, et al., 2003), 4) a revised
model for tectonic segmentation of the Costa Rican and Nicaraguan
Pacific margins (Marshall and Vannuchi, 2003), and 5) documentation of
the southern continuation of the Cretaceous Mexican arc on the Chortis
block (Rogers, et al., 2003).

Against the backdrop of numerous sessions on Mexican margins and
terranes, the similarities in the evolution of the southern Cordillera
and the Caribbean/Central America stand out. These include: 1) the
arrival of the Guerrero terrane of Mexico along the western margin of
North America coincides with the early development of the Great Arc of
the Caribbean; 2) the transpressive deformation in Mexico produces by
translation of the Chortis block from SW Mexico; and 3) the eastward
younging mafic sequences of the TransMexican Volcanic Belt trace the
tear of the Cocos slab breakoff imaged beneath Central America.

Bringing the Caribbean to the Cordillera session was a success and with
the interest and interaction evident at the meeting, similar sessions
are sure to be included in future Cordillera section meeting.

Participants and links to abstracts from this session can be found at
the GSA website:
http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2003CD/finalprogram/session_4515.htm

--
Robert D. Rogers
Dept. of Geological Sciences
Institute for Geophysics
The University of Texas at Austin
4412 Spicewood Springs Rd. bldg 600
Austin, TX 78759-8500


Honduras Geology: http://www.ig.utexas.edu/research/projects/honduras/index.htm

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