Palisade Crest Intrusive Suite
Palisade Crest Intrusive Suite
Late and Middle Jurassic, ~155-171 Ma
Occurs along crest of central Sierra Nevada, with two isolated bodies northwest of Mono Lake, as well as several bodies farther east on the northwestern margin of Owens Valley and east of the Long Valley caldera. Chiefly granodiorite and leucogranite. This suite has zircon U-Pb ages of ~155-167 Ma (Stern and others, 1981; Bateman, 1992; Mundil and others, 2004; Lackey and others, 2008), along with Rb-Sr whole rock ages (included in the unit age) of ~169-171 Ma (Bateman, 1992), K-Ar ages of ~78-154 Ma (biotite) and ~150-183 Ma (hornblende; Kistler and others, 1966; Evernden and Kistler, 1970), as well as apatite fission track age of ~87 Ma and sphene fission track age of ~85 Ma (Naeser and Dodge, 1969). Major plutons: Tinemaha Granodiorite, granodiorites of McMurry Meadows, of Goddard Canyon, and of upper Blue Canyon, granites of Tunemah Lake, of Tehipite Dome, of Bear Dome, and of Alpine Peak, and leucogranites of Casa Diablo Mountain, of Hell for Sure Pass, of Red Mountain Creek and of Taboose Creek. In the Goddard Range, this unit is intrusively linked to shallow-level metagranitic rocks (unit SCGG) and coeval metavolcanic rocks (units SCGV and HSV) of the Sierra Crest and High Sierra terranes to make up the Goddard arc.