Overview of the southeast Caribbean–South American plate boundary zone

Abstract

Knowledge of the geologic evolution of the northern margin of South America has increased tremendously, inspired by the occurrence of huge hydrocarbon deposits. This margin originated in late Triassic time when the supercontinent of Pangea broke up and North and South America drifted apart. The passive margin accommodated a thick sequence of Jurassic to Tertiary sediments. During the latest Cretaceous to the Present, the Antilles volcanic arc, built upon the Caribbean plate, migrated southeastward and collided obliquely with South America. This collision resulted in the diachronous accretion of allochthonous terranes as well as diachronous formation of a fold and thrust belt. This belt was initiated in the west (Colombia) during the latest Cretaceous and progressively moved east and reached Trinidad only in Miocene time. In front of this thrust belt, diachronous foreland basins developed. The present paper reviews the geologic evolution of northern Venezuela and adjacent areas in the Caribbean Sea, based to a large extent on a huge amount of new data released by oil companies and data collected by universities.

U/Pb detrital zircon provenance from late cretaceous metamorphic units of the Guajira Peninsula, Colombia: Tectonic implications on the collision between the Caribbean arc and the South American margin

“…Some of the older Paleoproterozoic zircons, as old as 2.1 Ga and the minor presence of Archean grains may be also linked to the Amazon Craton (Tassinari et al, 2000;Ostos et al, 2005).…”

Paleomagnetic data and K–Ar ages from Mesozoic units of the Santa Marta massif: A preliminary interpretation for block rotation and translations

“…1A). The Borde Llanero fault system separates poorly deformed Cretaceous and Cenozoic rocks of the Llanos basin (e.g., Cooper et al, 1995;Bayona et al, 2007) overlying deformed lower Paleozoic sedimentary rocks and Precambrian basement (Dueñas, 2002) with affinity to rocks exposed in the Guyana (Amazonian) craton (Priem et al, 1982;Ostos et al, 2005). The Romeral fault system bounds continental basement blocks to the east from oceanic-cored accreted terranes to the west (Estrada, 1995;Cediel et al, 2003;Kerr and Tarney, 2005).…”

Palaeozoic to Early Jurassic history of the northwestern corner of Gondwana, and implications for the evolution of the Iapetus, Rheic and Pacific Oceans

“…Digital relief map(Amante and Eakins, 2008) showing the tectonic provinces of northern South America modified fromFeo-Codecido et al (1984) andOstos et al (2005). The locations of geological maps inFigures2 and 4 are highlighted in dashed red boxes.…”