What do you people know about the formation of Corbin Granite?

rocky Shawn

Dear Shawn,

I caught Chuck in the hall and asked him. He says it is part of the Grenville basement exposed in the Pinelog window a few miles west of Tate, Georgia. He thinks it was deformed into an anticline during the Acadian Orogeny. He was also wondering if what you call Corbin Granite is actually the undeformed part of the Corbin Gneiss. He's not sure but thinks he read that the Corbin Gneiss represents allochtonous North American basement.

I found a few references. See below.

For the record, granite is an intrusive igneous rock and not volcanic in origin. Gneiss is a metamorphic rock.

Steve Mattox, University of North Dakota

Sources of Information:

Gargi, S.P., 1988, The documentation of the natural superplastic flow of quartz in a quartzofeldspathic rock in the Blue Ridge of Georgia: EOS Transactions, v. 72, p. 287.

Higgins, M.W., Crawford, R.F., Crawford, T.J., and Cressler, C.W., 1988, The Murphy fault zone, Corbin and Cohutta massifs, and talking Rock accretionary complex, and the geologic framework of northern Georgia and southern North Carolina: Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs, v. 20, no. 4, p. 270.

Li, L., and Tull, J.F., 1993, Cover sequence stratigraphy and structure of the Corbin basement culmination, Georgia Blue Ridge: Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs, v. 25, no. 4, p. 29.

Martin, B.F., 1974, The petrology of the Corbin Gneiss: Masters thesis, University of Georgia.

Offield, T.W., and Higgins, 1991, Thrusting over and around a basement knob in northern Georgia: Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs, v. 23, no. 1, p. 111. 

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