Geology of Panamint Valley- Saline Valley pull-apart system, California: palinspastic evidence for low-angle geometry of a Neogene range-bounding fault.

Palinspastic reconstruction of northern Panamint Valley indicates that the valley was formed by movement on a shallow crustal, low-angle normal fault of 0-15 degree west dip during the last 3.0Ma. This interpretation appears to contradict the notions that little extension is accommodated in the uppermost crust by low- angle faulting and that the most recent extension in the Basin and Range Province is accommodated exclusively by high-angle faulting. Saline Valley, however, is interpreted to have formed by extension on closely spaced, rotated planar normal faults. Thus, within one geometric system of paired pull-apart basins, extension appears to have been accommodated in the shallow crust in two different ways.-from Authors