page_title: Cocinetas Basin
section_title: Tectonic history
hierarchical_section_title: Cocinetas Basin / Description / Tectonic history
caption_attribution_description: English: Image of a pull apart basin redrawn from Frisch et al 2010
context_page_description: The Cocinetas Basin is a small sedimentary basin of approximately 1,000 square kilometres in northeasternmost Colombia. The onshore pull-apart basin is located in the department of La Guajira at the border with Zulia, Venezuela. The basin is bound by three sets of hills; the Serranía de Jarara, Serranía Macuira and Serranía Cocinas, with the eastern boundary formed by the Gulf of Venezuela, part of the Caribbean Sea.
  The basin was formed during the Paleogene as a result of the eastward movement of the Caribbean Plate along the northern edge of the South American Plate, leading to the deposition of a Middle Eocene to Middle Pleistocene sedimentary sequence of conglomerates, sandstones, siltstones, limestones and mudstones.
  In the Cocinetas Basin, several fossiliferous stratigraphic units have been registered, providing an abundance of marine and continental vertebrate and invertebrate fossil fauna assemblages.
context_section_description: The tectonic history of the Cocinetas Basin, a pull-apart basin formed on top of Mesozoic basement underlain by oceanic crust, goes back to the Paleogene. Farther to the south, in the Cesar-Ranchería Basin, the Paleocene, absent in the Cocinetas Basin, is represented by the first neotropic forest in the world, with megafauna as the largest recorded snake, Titanoboa cerrejonensis, with an estimated length of 14 metres (46 ft) and a weight of 1,135 kilograms (2,502 lb), today found in the Cerrejón Formation, dated to 60 to 58 Ma. It has been estimated on the basis of the fossil flora, pollen and large reptiles that the mean annual temperature was between 28.5 and 33 °C (83.3 and 91.4 °F) and yearly precipitation ranging from 2,260 to 4,640 millimetres (89 to 183 in) per year.
  North of the Oca Fault, the oldest sedimentary sequence of the Cocinetas Basin, the Macarao Formation, is the oldest sedimentary unit of both the higher La Guajira area (the Cocinetas Basin) as well as the lower La Guajira area. This formation was deposited in a phase that is informally called "rifting", because of the formation of half grabens in the Late Eocene, though no real rifting occurred in the area.  Shortly after deposition, during the Early Oligocene, the Macarao Formation was heavily deformed, creating the series of hills that today still surround the Cocinetas Basin. This transtensional deformation was caused by the eastward movement of the Caribbean Plate along the South American Plate, when the Caribbean volcanic arc was located just north of the Cocinetas Basin. The main fault movement forming the pull-apart basin of Cocinetas was caused by the dextral Cuisa Fault, active from the Paleocene to the Eocene.
  The transtensional phase of the Early Oligocene was followed by the deposition of the unconformably overlying Siamaná Formation, characterised by a basal sequence of conglomerates, indicating tectonic uplift in the provenance areas, followed by reefal limestones rich in corals and algae. A new phase of transtension took place in the Early to Middle Miocene, when the Uitpa, Jimol and Castilletes Formations were deposited. The initial phase of uplift of the Isthmus of Panama, has been dated to this period, at around 12 Ma.
  The Andean orogeny, represented by the tectonic uplift of the Colombian Eastern Ranges and its northern extension, the Serranía del Perijá, caused tilting and uplift in the Cocinetas Basin in the Late Miocene and Early Pliocene, when the Neogene hiatus separates the Castilletes Formation from the Ware Formation. The end of the Neogene corresponded to a marine platform setting, interrupted by the presence of a series of highs; the present-day mountain ranges of the region. Between these elevated areas, reefal limestones were deposited in a relatively quiet marine environment. During the Andean orogenic phase, the paleotemperatures in the basin dropped considerably; in the Baja Guajira area from 115 °C (239 °F) in the Early Miocene to 70 °C (158 °F) in the Late Miocene. In the Late Miocene to Pliocene, the major faults to the southwest of the Cocinetas Basin, the Oca and Bucaramanga-Santa Marta Faults were tectonically active.
caption: Sketch of a pull-apart basin
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS4 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2014:03:26 17:08:14", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "2446", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2197", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "667"}