Role of fluid pressure in mechanics of overthrust faulting: Reply

Davis cites four areas of low-angle faulting in which he believes that high fluid pressures can have played no important part in the development and movement of the thrust plates, but it seems to us that the concept or some variant of it may help to explain the observed field relationships in the three out of these four areas with which we have had some first-hand experience. In the areas of the Heart Mountain thrust of Wyoming, the Muddy Mountain thrust of Nevada, and the structurally higher, crystalline thrust sheets of the Swiss Alps, field relationships which include evidence of dehydration reactions during metamorphism of evaporites and of pelitic rocks suggest that interstitial fluid pressures may have been high and thus have played an essential part in the development of the thrust faults. In the fourth area cited by Davis, that of his own studies in the Klamath Mountains of California, we have had no first-hand experience and thus are not competent to answer his criticisms.