The islands of Wallacea, located between the Southeast Asian (Sunda) and Australian (Sahul) continental areas, offer unique potential for the study of evolution and cultural change. Located east of Java and Bali, which were periodically connected to the Asian mainland, the Wallacean islands could only be reached by
Quantifying the timing, magnitude, and rates of exhumation and deformation across the central Andes is a prerequisite for understanding the history of plateau rise. We present 23 new apatite and zircon fission track thermochronometer samples to chronicle the exhumation and deformation across the entire (∼500 km) Andean fold‐thrust belt at ∼19.5°S in Bolivia. Exhumation and deformation are constrained with inverse thermal modeling of the thermochronometer data, regional stratigraphy, geothermal gradients, and mass deficits inferred from a balanced section. Results suggest the following: (1) Initial exhumation of the Eastern Cordillera (EC) fore‐thrust and back‐thrust belts began in the late Eocene to early Oligocene (27–36 Ma) and continued in a distributed manner in the late Oligocene to early Miocene (19–25 Ma). Interandean zone (IA) exhumation began 19–22 Ma, followed by a third pulse of exhumation (11–16 Ma) in the EC back‐thrust belt and initial cooling in the westernmost Subandes (SA) 8–20 Ma. Finally, exhumation propagated eastward across the SA during the late Mio‐Pliocene (2–8 Ma). (2) Exhumation magnitudes are spatially variable and range from maximums of <8 km in the EC fore‐thrust belt to average values of ∼4–7 km across the EC, ∼2.5–3 km in the Altiplano, ∼4–6 km in the IA, and ∼3 km in the SA. (3) Exhumation rates range from ∼0.1 to 0.2 mm/a in the EC, from ∼0.1 to 0.6 mm/a in the IA, and from ∼0.1 to 0.4 mm/a to locally 1.4 mm/a or more in the eastern SA. We synthesize similar constraints with sediments throughout Bolivia and characterize plateau development by (1) distributed deformation throughout the Altiplano and EC regions from ∼20 to 40 Ma with minor deformation continuing until ∼10 Ma, (2) contemporaneous cessation of most EC deformation and exhumation of the IA ∼20 Ma implying establishment of the modern plateau width with significant, but unknown crustal thickness and elevation shortly thereafter by ∼15–20 Ma, and (3) dominantly eastward propagation of deformation from the IA since ∼20 Ma with minor out‐of‐sequence deformation in the central to eastern SA.
We present a multi‐chronometric approach for reconstructing deep‐time thermal histories using southern Baffin Island as a case study. This continuous thermal history begins with the Palaeoproterozoic Trans‐Hudson Orogeny and is derived from inverse and forward models that integrate thermochronometers spanning some 500°C: new apatite U–Pb ages and K‐feldspar 40Ar/39Ar multi‐diffusion domain data, published (U–Th)/He zircon ages and new multi‐kinetic fission‐track results. Integration of data from a wider temperature range reduces ambiguities in thermal‐history modelling and permits us to constrain the timing of geological processes including, extended post‐orogenic cooling, enhanced later Proterozoic cooling, and then episodic burial and exhumation in the Palaeozoic–Mesozoic.
Apatite fission track thermochronology is a well-established tool for reconstructing the lowtemperature thermal and tectonic evolution of continental crust. The variation of fission track ages and distribution of fission track lengths are primarily controlled by cooling, which may be initiated by earth movements and consequent denudation at the Earth's surface and/or by changes in the thermal regime. Using numerical forward-modelling procedures these parameters can be matched with time-temperature paths that enable thermal and tectonic processes to be mapped out in considerable detail. This study describes extensive Australian regional fission track datasets that have been modelled sequentially and inverted into time-temperature solutions for visualisation as a series of timeslice images depicting the cooling history of present-day surface rocks during their passage through the upper crust. The data have also been combined with other datasets, including digital elevation and heat flow, to image the denudation history and the evolution of palaeotopography. These images provide an important new perspective on crustal processes and landscape evolution and show how important tectonic and denudation events over the last 300 million years can be visualised in time and space. The application of spatially integrated denudation-rate chronology is also demonstrated for some key Australian terranes including the Lachlan and southern New England Orogens of southeastern Australia, Tasmania, the Gawler Craton, the Mt Isa Inlier, southwestern Australian crystalline terranes (including the Yilgarn Craton) and the Kimberley Block. This approach provides a readily accessible framework for quantifying the otherwise undetectable, timing and magnitude of long-term crustal denudation in these terranes, for a part of the geological record previously largely unconstrained. Discrete episodes of enhanced denudation occurred principally in response to changes in drainage, base-level changes and/or uplift/denudation related to far-field effects resulting from intraplate stress or tectonism at plate margins. The tectonism was mainly associated with the history of continental breakup of the Gondwana Supercontinent from Late Palaeozoic time, although effects related to compression are also recorded in eastern Australia. The results also suggest that the magnitude of denudation of cratonic blocks has been significantly underestimated in previous studies, and that burial and exhumation are significant factors in the preservation of apparent 'ancient' features in the Australian landscape.
The Upper Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous part of the Brookian sequence of northern Alaska consists of syntectonic deposits shed from the north-directed, early Brookian orogenic belt. We employ sandstone petrography, detrital zircon U-Pb age analysis, and zircon fi ssion-track double-dating methods to investigate these deposits in a succession of thin regional thrust sheets in the western Brooks Range and in the adjacent Colville foreland basin to determine sediment provenance, sedimentary dispersal patterns, and to reconstruct the evolution of the Brookian orogen. The oldest and structurally highest deposits are allochthonous Upper Jurassic volcanic arc-derived sandstones that rest on accreted ophiolitic and/or subduction assemblage mafi c igneous rocks. These strata contain a nearly unimodal Late Jurassic zircon population and are interpreted to be a fragment of a forearc basin that was emplaced onto the Brooks Range during arc-continent collision. Synorogenic deposits found at structurally lower levels contain decreasing amounts of ophiolite and arc debris, Jurassic zircons, and increasing amounts of continentally derived sedimentary detritus accompanied by broadly distributed late Paleozoic and Triassic (359-200 Ma), early Paleozoic (542-359 Ma), and Paleoproterozoic (2000-1750 Ma) zircon populations. The zircon populations display fi ssion-track evidence of cooling during the Brookian event and evidence of an earlier episode of cooling in the late Paleozoic and Triassic. Surprisingly, there is little evidence for erosion of the continental basement of Arctic Alaska, its Paleozoic sedimentary cover, or its hinterland metamorphic rocks in early foreland basin strata at any structural and/or stratigraphic level in the western Brooks Range. Detritus from exhumation of these sources did not arrive in the foreland basin until the middle or late Albian in the central part of the Colville Basin. These observations indicate that two primary provenance areas provided detritus to the early Brookian foreland basin of the western Brooks Range: (1) local sources in the oceanic Angayucham terrane, which forms the upper plate of the orogen, and (2) a sedimentary source region outside of northern Alaska. Pre-Jurassic zircons and continental grain types suggest the latter detritus was derived from a thick succession of Triassic turbidites in the Russian Far East that were originally shed from source areas in the Uralian-Taimyr orogen and deposited in the South Anyui Ocean, interpreted here as an early Mesozoic remnant basin. Structural thickening and northward emplacement onto the continental margin of Chukotka during the Brookian structural event are proposed to have led to development of a highland source area located in eastern Chukotka, Wrangel Island, and Herald Arch region. The abundance of detritus from this source area in most of the samples argues that the Colville Basin and ancestral foreland basins were supplied by longitudinal sediment dispersal systems that extended eastward along the Brooks Range orogen and were t...
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