The Irtysh Shear Zone at Marble pass in the Altai Mountains

Abstract

Irtysh Shear Zone (ISZ) is regarded as a giant sinistral strike-slip displacement that affected the fabric of the entire continent of Asia, estimated to be stretching for 1000 of kilometers with width of a bit more than 15 km in the northwest, north of Semey, and almost 60 km in the southeast at the Kazakh-Chinese border. Some of the geological maps of Kazakhstan from some authors show that ISZ could be bordering a Marble pass area. So, field exploration to Marble pass was planned to find ISZ and shear sense indicators. By the end of the exploration and deep analysis of results, it was concluded that structure of Marble pass is not a sinistral shear zone, but a shortening deformation. Therefore, three hypotheses were presented, either ISZ is not in Marble pass, or ISZ does not exist, or ISZ is so wide, the exploration was carried in the middle of the zone.