Silurian subduction-related assembly of fault-defined tracts at the Laurieston Fault, Southern Uplands accretionary terrane, Scotland, UK

Subduction-related accretion of fault-defined tracts built up the Southern Uplands terrane during the final stages of closure of the Iapetus Ocean (Ll andovery to Wenlock). Contrasts in depositional environment and pronounced differences in geochemical composition, provenance studies and metamorphic grade across the Laurieston Fault between the Gala and Hawick groups, sugge sts that it has a greater regional significance than most other tract-bound ing structures. Initiated by underthrusting, and acting as a locus for subs equent sinistral strike-slip, the fault overlies a regional gravity anomaly gradient that is interpreted to be due, in part, to a concealed NW-ward di pping shallow basement surface. This is modelled as an open ramp in the NE that steepens to a near-vertical step along-strike to the SW. A change in s tructural geometry noted at the Laurieston Fault, with excision of accretio nary tracts, is related to a period of oblique closure of the Iapetus Ocean . The youngest Gala Group tracts were accreted during a period of intense t ranspression to form a regional strike-slip duplex over the shallow basemen t ramp with termination of the tracts at the Laurieston Fault, its surface expression. The ramp acted as an obstacle to forward-breaking thrust progre ss, forcing the out-of-sequence thrusting and repetitive thrust imbrication noted in the eastern Southern Uplands. Upper Palaeozoic reactivation of th is basement structure may have transferred strain between extensional Permi an basins.