The Southern Interior Plains

CIM Bulletin, 1970

THE REGION of Western Canada covered by this report lies between the Precambrian rocks of the Canadian Shield and the structurally deformed rocks of the eastern Cordillera, extending northward from the international border to the 60th parallel. It is some 487,000 square miles in area, with a total sedimentary fill of about 535,000 cubic miles0 >. It includes parts of the prairie provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta and the northeast corner of British Columbia and forms part of the geological region known as the Interior Platform, commonly referred to as the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin. The bedrock comprises carbonates and evaporites of Paleozoic age that lie on Precambrian crystalline rocks and are overlain by a relatively thick blanket of Mesozoic and Tertiary elastic rocks. The nearly flat-lying bedrock, covered by a thick mantle of glacial drift, forms the Interior Plains physiographic province.

Keywords: Alberta, Alberta, earth sciences, Geological Survey of Canada, Interior Plains, sedimentary basin, Data, Development, Developments, Investigations, Oil, Oils, Research, Rock, Rocks