Fracture and fault patterns associated with basement-cored anticlines: The example of Teapot Dome, Wyoming

Teapot Dome is an asymmetric, doubly plunging, basement-cored, Laramide-age anticline. Most of the fractures, deformation bands, and faults at Teapot Dome are interpreted to have formed during contemporaneous longitudinal and transverse stretching of the sedimentary cover over a basement-involved thrust. Strain was accommodated by fractures, deformation bands, and normal and normal-oblique faults that strike both parallel and perpendicular to the fold hinge. The fracture and fault patterns at Teapot Dome are distinctly different from those formed within anticlines associated with thin-skinned thrust systems. The inferred fracture-influenced permeability anisotropy of thick-skinned systems is therefore distinct from that of thin-skinned systems. We propose that Teapot Dome is a good analog for similar basement-involved, thrust-generated anticlines.

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