Prof. Dan Miggins, a co-author and who dated dozens of our samples at Oregon State University, is reviewing the final draft by William Peppin and me. Late Cenozoic uplift originated with Whitney in 1865, who thought that beneath a latite flow was a buried bedrock canyon. Actually, the flow remnants are atop ridges. By 1900 the northern Sierra had been sufficiently mapped to refute this interpretation, but by then it had become dogma, and was embellished over time.
My northernmost site is basement topography buried by Late Cretaceous sediments; southernmost is the 3.5 Ma basalt, which is multiple eruptions, one descending to the Little Kern River. Eocene pediments exist in the range, the most impressive one, perhaps, in the North Fork Tule River drainage, as I said back in 1997. Cal Tech provides the age(s): 40-45 Ma, but possibly Late Cretaceous, based on Late Cretaceous remnants mapped on a pediment in the Roseville area.
Jeff Schaffer
Sounds interesting. I would like to read your manuscript.
BK Darling
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