Use of Stream and Dismembered Stream Valleys Now Crossing Wyoming’s Northern Laramie Mountains to Test a Recently Proposed Regional Geomorphology Paradigm, USA

Abstract

Detailed topographic maps show multiple stream valleys and what are probably dismembered stream valleys that extend completely across Wyoming’s northern Laramie Mountains. Several of the most obvious valleys are described with valley origins first explained (or attempted to be explained) from the commonly accepted regional geomorphology paradigm (accepted paradigm) perspective and second from a recently proposed regional geomorphology paradigm (new paradigm) perspective in an effort to determine which of the two paradigms provides the simplest explanations. Accepted paradigm explanations require at least some of the valley erosion to have occurred prior to deposition of Oligocene and Miocene sediments that once covered the northern Laramie Mountains (with some of the exhumed valleys now containing sediment cover remnants). In contrast the fundamentally different new paradigm requires immense south-oriented continental ice sheet melt water floods to have crossed the region as ice sheet related crustal warping raised the region and the Laramie Mountains (and implies sediments now partially filling some of the valleys are probably flood deposited materials). The new paradigm provides simpler explanations for the origins of the valleys now extending completely across the northern Laramie Mountains and also for their related barbed tributaries, truncated side valleys, and drainage route U-turns than the accepted paradigm, although the new paradigm also leads to a fundamentally different middle and late Cenozoic regional geologic history than is currently recognized. One paradigm cannot be used to judge a different paradigm, but the paradigms can be compared based on their ability to explain evidence and Occam’s Razor can determine which of the two paradigms provides the simplest explanations. New paradigm explanations for northern Laramie Mountains valley origins investigated here require fewer assumptions than the accepted paradigm explanations suggesting the new paradigm merits serious future consideration.