Kernville terrane - southern Sierra Nevada
Kernville terrane - southern Sierra Nevada
Cretaceous, Jurassic and early Paleozoic(?)
Consists of quartz arenite turbidite, and massive metaquartzite blocks in an argillite matrix with lesser graphite slate, felsic to intermediate metavolcanic rocks and tuff, banded calcsilicate rock, marble, and lenses of mafic schist. Local metamorphosed barite lenses. Local thick marble units (> 100 m) in southeastern pendants. Metamorphosed to upper greenschist to amphibolite facies. Detrital zircon ages for massive quartzite blocks and turbidites suggest diverse origin for units. Unit contains turbidites derived from the Cordilleran Craton margin, and quartz-rich detritus in mélange blocks with an uncertain provenance (Saleeby and Dunne, 2015). Metasedimentary units of terrane may correlate with early Paleozoic marine sedimentary rocks of Shoo Fly Complex (unit NSSF) in northern Sierra Nevada (Harding and others, 2000) and others resemble strata in Death Valley (Memeti and others, 2010). Unit includes metasedimentary rocks of Keen (Ross, 1989), French Gulch and Fairview pendants, and Long Canyon and Tehachapi metasedimentary belts (Ross, 1995). Interpreted as metamorphosed craton-margin sedimentary rocks. Detrital zircon MDAs of ~142, ~159, ~171, ~178, ~625 ~680, ~700 Ma (Saleeby, 2011; Attia and others, 2018, 2021). Igneous zircon U-Pb ages of volcanic and hypabyssal rocks in the terrane (Erskine Canyon sequence) range from ~97-105 Ma (Busby-Spera and Saleeby, 1990; Saleeby and others, 2008) and probably reflect marginal intrusives or overlapping volcanics related to surrounding plutons (parts of units Gbv and Gop). Saleeby and others (1978) report an Early Jurassic fossil from this unit near Lake Isabella. Ross (1989) interprets these rocks as Mesozoic, but others (e.g. Chapman and others, 2012) interpret them as Paleozoic rocks unconformably overlain by Late Triassic to Jurassic metavolcanic and metasedimentary rocks.