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Escalona, A.¹, Sena, A.¹, and P. Mann²

¹Department of Geological Sciences and Jackson School of Geosciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712
²Institute for Geophysics and Jackson School of Geosciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX 78759

We have reprocessed and reinterpreted more than 10,000 km of Gulfrexmulti-channel 2D seismic reflection lines collected by Gulf Oil Corporation in 1972 along the northern margin of South America (offshore Venezuela and Trinidad). These digital data were donated to the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics and represent the largest single, digital reflection survey of the region. Reprocessing of these data included: format correction, filtering, post-stack multiple suppression, and fk migration. Reprocessed data were loaded and interpreted on a workstation. The data straddle a 2,000,000 km2 zone of Paleocene-Recent, time-transgressive, oblique collision between the Caribbean arc system and the passive continental margin of northern South America. Free-air, satellite gravity data shows the remarkable 1000-km-scale continuity of four basement ridges between the uncollided part of the Caribbean arc system (NS-trending Lesser Antilles arc) and the EW-trending collisional area north of Venezuela. The basement ridges involved in the Venezuelan collisional zone include: 1) Aruba-Bonaire-Curacao ridge that can be traced as a continuous feature to the Aves ridge remnant arc of the Lesser Antilles; 2) the partially inverted Blanquilla-Bonaire basin that can be traced into the Grenada back-arc basin; 3) Margarita-Los Testigos platform that can be traced to the Lesser Antilles volcanic arc; and 4) foreland basins and fold-thrust belts of eastern Venezuela Serrania del Interior and Maturin basin) that can be traced to the Tobago forearc basin and Barbados accretionary prism. Gulfrex data document the progressive change of basinal fault systems from NS-striking normal faults formed in extensional, Lesser Antilles intra-arc settings to rotated and inverted, NE and EW-striking normal faults deformed in the collisional area north of Venezuela. Age of initial shortening of basinal areas and inversion of normal faults setting does not follow the simple, expected pattern of west-to-east younging; instead important, regional pulses of regional shortening and normal fault inversion occurred during the Eocene and Middle Miocene. ESE-striking lateral ramp faults related to differential convergence across the region disrupt the lateral continuity of the arc-related basement ridges.