Monocline

Formation

• By differential compaction over an underlying structure, particularly a large fault at the edge of a basin due to the greater compactibility of the basin fill, the amplitude of the fold will die out gradually upwards.
• By mild reactivation of an earlier extensional fault during a phase of inversion causing folding in the overlying sequence.
• As a form of fault propagation fold during upward propagation of an extensional fault in basement into an overlying cover sequence.
• As a form of fault propagation fold during upward propagation of a reverse fault in basement into an overlying cover sequence.

  Examples

• Waterpocket Fold in Capitol Reef National Park, Utah
• Grandview-Phantom Monocline in Grand Canyon, Arizona
• Grand Hogback in Colorado
• Lebombo Mountains in Southern Africa
• Lapstone Monocline in the Blue Mountains
• Beaumaris Monocline in Victoria
• Purbeck Monocline on the Isle of Purbeck, Dorset, England
• Fore-Sudetic Monocline, Poland
• Sindh Monocline, Pakistan
• Torres Flexure, southern Brazil