Detrital zircon record and tectonic setting

Abstract

Detrital zircon spectra refl ect the tectonic setting of the basin in which they are deposited. Convergent plate margins are characterized by a large proportion of zircon ages close to the depositional age of the sediment, whereas sediments in collisional, extensional and intracratonic settings contain greater proportions with older ages that refl ect the history of the underlying basement. These differences can be resolved by plotting the distribution of the difference between the measured crystallization ages (CA) of individual zircon grains present in the sediment and the depositional age (DA) of the sediment. Application of this approach to successions where the original nature of the basin and/or the link to source are no longer preserved constrains the tectonic setting in which the sediment was deposited.

The transition from Pangea amalgamation to fragmentation: Constraints from detrital zircon geochronology on West Iberia paleogeography and sediment sources

“…Although sedimentary successions formed in extensional settings are less likely to include zircon grains of syn-depositional age compared to those formed in convergent and collisional settings (cf Cawood et al, 2012), the detrital age signatures of the Triassic strata can still shed some light on the timing of rifting in the West Iberian margin. The lower part of the Silves Group in the Lusitanian, Alentejo and Algarve basins is fossil-poor.…”

Provenance of Pleistocene Rhine River Middle Terrace sands between the Swiss–German border and Cologne based on U–Pb detrital zircon ages

“…Such lags are rather typical of rivers, which drain stable cratons and discharge at rifted margins like some east Australian rivers and the Yellow, Amazon, Orange, and Nile rivers (Sircombe 1999;Rino et al 2008). The time lag is much smaller or virtually absent in rivers draining tectonically active mountain belts (Cawood et al 2012) like the Indus, Ganges, Mekong, and Yangtze rivers which include zircon Fig. 9 Map of the Alps and the adjacent foreland basins.…”

Detrital zircon U–Pb ages of the Proterozoic metaclastic-sedimentary rocks in Hainan Province of South China: New constraints on the depositional time, source area, and tectonic setting of the Shilu Fe–Co–Cu ore district

“…Such a tectonic setting is also consistent with the terrigenous geochemical affinities of the host rocks and interbedded BIFs (Xu et al, 2014a) which indicate a lack of juvenile materials related to intensive crust-scale tectonism in adjacent areas. This corresponds to the present U-Pb age spectra which show only minor amounts of detrital zircons with ages approximating the depositional time of the sediments, suggesting a foreland basin setting formed during continental collision (Cawood et al, 2013a).…”

“…Detrital zircon analysis offers a way to resolve these questions (Nelson, 2001), as zircon has the ability to withstand the effects of weathering, erosion, abrasion, and post-crystallization alteration, can survive multiple episodes of transportation, diagenesis, and metamorphism up to amphibolite facies, and has an inherently stable U-Pb isotopic system (Fedo et al, 2003). The age distribution of detrital zircon populations in (meta)sedimentary successions has been successfully used as a powerful proxy to constrain both the provenance characteristics and maximum depositional ages of clastic sedimentary rocks, to establish spatio-temporal connections among different stratigraphic successions, and to test or clarify the affiliation of different blocks or microcontinents, and thereby to unravel tectonic histories and paleogeographical reconstructions of paleocontinents or terranes, which is a key component of research into geodynamics of basin formation and orogenic processes (e.g., Gerdes and Zeh, 2006;Zhao et al, 2011;Cawood et al, 2013a;May et al, 2013;Wang et al, 2014b). By means of both SHRIMP II and LA-ICP-MS techniques coupled with cathodoluminescence (CL) imaging, this paper presents U-Pb analyses of detrital zircon from the Shilu Group and overlying Shihuiding Formation in the Shilu district.…”