ABSTRACT
On this expedition, we cross the foreland La Popa Basin and traverse the Sierra Madre in the Monterrey Salient, a zone of weak detachment surfaces and monster detachment folds. We tour the hinterland on the Meseta Central and pass through the Sierra again in a zone of strong, sticky detachments where thrusted folds are the norm. We visit many formations that are lateral equivalents to those encountered in the subsurface in the Gulf of Mexico Basin, and examine their depositional setting and influence on deformation (their mechanical stratigraphy). We visit salt/gypsum units, redbeds, and conglomerates related to rifting of the Gulf of Mexico, evaporite-cored uplifts, salt welds, platform limestones, reefs, platform margin units, delta systems, deep-water limestones, and syntectonic turbidites. Along the way, we discuss petroleum resources of the foreland basins and the lack thereof in the Sierra Madre, and review interesting historical events from this part of Mexico.
