Tectonic features of the Caribbean region

Abstract

Suess’s conception of the framework of the Caribbean region (101) remains fundamentally unchanged, for a zone of folds can be traced from northern Central America through the Greater Antilles, then through the area of the Lesser Antilles toward Tobago and Trinidad, which are made up of folds extending more or less continuously across Venezuela from the Cordillera Oriental of the Andes in Columbia. Whether this zone of folds should be considered as a part of the Andean system is more a matter of nomenclature than of genetics. This great salient of folds advancing into the Atlantic has at its apex a Pacific type of island are—the only place on the American side of the Atlantic, as Suess pointed out, where an island festoon faces the Atlantic. Other island arcs are found on the north and south flanks of the salient. This penetration of a Pacific type of structure into the Atlantic is the reason for considering the tectonic features of the Caribbean region in a congress devoted to Pacific affairs. Southern Central America is a region of apparently younger folds stretching across the base of the salient. Despite this simplicity in the framework, it has become apparent that the tectonic history of the Caribbean region is complicated and that folds of different age can be traced. These folds form arcs of varying curvature that face in different directions. At places the arcs of different age are parallel to each other, but elsewhere the later arcs trend across earlier folds. In almost this whole region the effects of folding that took place during and after Miocene time can clearly be seen.