Along the western Appalachians, from Virginia to Georgia, the mountain
folds are broken by more than fifteen parallel thrust planes, running
from northeast to southwest, along which the older strata have been
pushed westward over the younger. The longest continuous fault has
been traced three hundred and seventy-five miles, and the greatest
horizontal displacement has been estimated at not less than eleven
miles.
=Crush breccia.= Rocks often do not fault with a clean and simple
fracture, but along a zone, sometimes several yards in width, in which
they are broken to fragments. It may occur also that strata which as a
whole yield to lateral thrust by folding include beds of brittle
rocks, such as thin-layered limestones, which are crushed to pieces by
the strain. In either case the fragments when recemented by
percolating waters form a rock known as a _crush breccia_ (pronounced
_bretcha_)(Fig. 186).
[Illustration: Fig. 186. Breccia]
Breccia is a term applied to any rock formed of cemented _angular_
fragments. This rock may be made by the consolidation of volcanic
cinders, of angular waste at the foot of cliffs, or of fragments of
coral torn by the waves from coral reefs, as well as of strata crushed
by crustal movements.
Surface Features due to Dislocations
=Fault scarps.= A fault of recent date may be marked at surface by a
scarp, because the face of the upthrown block has not yet been worn to
the level of the downthrow side.
After the upthrown block has been worn down to this level,
differential erosion produces fault scarps wherever weak rocks and
resistant rocks are brought in contact along the fault plane; and the
harder rocks, whether on the upthrow or the downthrow side, emerge in
a line of cliffs. Where a fault is so old that no abrupt scarps
appear, its general course is sometimes marked by the line of division
between highland and lowland or hill and plain. Great faults have
sometimes brought ancient crystalline rocks in contact with weaker and
younger sedimentary rocks, and long after erosion has destroyed all
fault scarps the harder crystallines rise in an upland of rugged or
mountainous country which meets the lowland along the line of
faulting.
[Illustration: Fig. 187. A Concealed Fault
This fault may be inferred from the changes in strata in
passing along the strike, as from _b_ to _a´_ and from
_c_ to _b´_]
The vast majority of faults give rise to no surface features. The
faulted region may be old enough to have been baseleveled, or the
rocks on both sides of the line of dislocation may be alike in their
resistance to erosion and therefore have been worn down to a common
slope. The fault may be entirely concealed by the mantle of waste, and
in such cases it can be inferred from abrupt changes in the character
or the strike and dip of the strata where they may outcrop near it
(Fig. 187).
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