Provenance of newly discovered Upper Ordovician black rock units in the West Kunlun Orogen, China: Constraints from detrital zircon U–Pb chronology and whole‐rock geochemistry

Abstract

We present new detrital zircon U–Pb chronological and whole‐rock geochemical data for the newly discovered black rock units in West Kunlun Orogen in an attempt to constrain the provenance variations of the siliciclastic rocks and the tectonic history of NW China. Geochemical data indicate these black rock units could have formed in an active continental margin to continental arc setting during the Late Ordovician and source rocks could have undergone modest chemical weathering under a relatively warm and humid climate during the deposition of the black rock units. U–Pb dating of 170 detrital zircons defines five major age populations at 459–545 Ma, 710–900 Ma, 1,300–900 Ma, 1,814–1,641 Ma, and 2,153–2,845 Ma, demonstrating that the black rock units deposited during the Late Ordovician and the tectonic events that occurred in the West Kunlun Orogen were related to the assembly and breakup of the supercontinents of Columbia and Rodinia. Prevalence of Early Palaeozoic magmatic zircons further indicates the black rock units were derived from a proximal source, most likely from the South Kunlun arc.

Geochemistry of the Palaeocene‐Eocene Upper Kelalan Formation, NW Borneo: Implications on palaeoweathering, tectonic setting, and provenance

“…Owing to their lower mobility in a variety of environments and lesser residence times in seawater (Cox, Lowe, & Cullers, 1995;Taylor & McLennan, 1985), the trace elements and rare earth elements (REEs) are useful in determining the provenance and tectonic settings. Certain immobile trace elements (e.g., V, La, Th, Zr, Hf, Sc, Co, Ni, Cr, and REEs) are used to identify the most likely provenance of a clastic sedimentary rock (Asiedu, Agoe, Amponsah, Nude, & Anani, 2019;Bhatia, 1985;Bhatia & Crook, 1986;Chen et al, 2019;Cullers, 1995;Cullers & Berendsen, 1998;Cullers & Podkovyrov, 2002;Garver & Scott, 1995;Khan, Sarma, Somasekhar, Ramanaiah, & Ramakrishna Reddy, 2019;Ma et al, 2019;Madhavaraju et al, 2020,b;McLennan, 1989;Nagarajan et al, 2014Nagarajan et al, , 2015Nagarajan et al, , 2019Nagarajan, Armstrong-Altrin, et al, 2017;Nagarajan, Roy, et al, 2017).…”

From Middle Neoproterozoic Extension to Paleozoic Accretion and Collision of the Eastern Tiklik Belt (the Western Kunlun Orogen, NW China)

“…Some dark meta-sedimentary rocks have the MDAs of ca. 460 Ma and were deposited in the continental arc setting in the western Tiklik belt [26]. All of the data indicate that the meta-sedimentary rocks from the eastern Tiklik belt are most likely mélanges rather than intact successive stratigraphic units.…”

“…Therefore, the tectonic relations and isotopic age variations of the Tiklik belt need to be re-evaluated in order to gain a better understanding of the contrasting tectonic senarios. Many researchers have suggested that the Tarim craton is a Rodinia-related piece of orogen that contains evidence of the break-up of the supercontinent [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]; however, models of the history of the reconstruction of Tarim in Rodinia are controversial [5,13,16,[22][23][24][25][26].…”