Guidebook 4. Field Trip Guide Book for Paleozoic and Mesozoic Rocks of Southeastern Minnesota

Abstract

The Paleozoic rocks of southeastern Minnesota (fig. 1) were deposited from a marine sea which occupied the Hollandale Embayment (fig. 2), a shallow depression that extended northward from the Ancestral Forest City Basin (Iowa Basin) onto the cratonic shelf and into Minnesota and Wisconsin in Early and Middle Paleozoic time. The rocks that now remain within the embayment in Minnesota are bordered to the east by nearshore-facies Paleozoic rocks on the Wisconsin Arch, to the northeast by Precambrian rocks that constitute the Wisconsin Dome, and to the north and west by nearshore-facies Paleozoic rocks lying near the margins of the Hollandale Embayment and the Precambrian rocks of the Transcontinental Arch. The embayment overlies older basins and horsts that are bounded by largescale Precambrian faults (Sims and Zietz, 1967). Many smaller Paleozoic basins, depositional barriers, and faults within the embayment probably have resulted from relatively minor recurrent movements along Precambrian faults during Paleozoic time (Craddock and others, 1963).