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Geology
Fantastic exposure of the core of the Camargo Syncline (More Geology!)
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Geology - Camargo Syncline
The ~250 km-long north-trending Camargo syncline is located along the eastern margin of the Eastern Cordillera and contains a modern river valley along its fold axis. It is composed of a several-km-thick succession of Tertiary sandstone and conglomerate (proximal fluvial and alluvial deposits) sourced from the west. This thick succession contains statigraphic units consistent with the back-bulge, forebulge, foredeep, and wedge-top geometry of a foreland-basin system, exemplifying the cratonward (eastward) migration of the Andean fold and thrust belt. As such, the Camargo Syncline is a spectacular example of how fold-and-thrust systems migrate in time and space.
The modern foreland basin system is now actively depositing sediment in fluvial megafans east of the Subandean Zone in the low-elevation Beni and Chaco plains. Because the present is the key to the past, the configuration and scale of the foredeep deposits suggest that they are remnants of an ancient fluvial megafan analogous to those observed today in the low-elevation plains.
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