Provenance of Upper Cretaceous-Paleogene sandstones in the foreland basin system of the Sierra Madre Oriental, northeastern Mexico, and its bearing on fluvial dispersal systems of the Mexican Laramide Province

Abstract

Sandstone petrography and detrital zircon U-Pb analysis of Upper Cretaceous-Paleogene sandstones in the foreland basin of the Sierra Madre Oriental in northeastern Mexico indicate long-distance sediment transport from arc, basement, and thrust-belt sources lying to the west, northwest, and south. The basin fi ll, termed the Difunta Group, consists of sublitharenites, litharenites, feldspathic litharenites, and lithic arkoses derived from mixed sources that included sedimentary rocks, magmatic arc rocks, and subordinate basement rocks. Six age populations comprise the detrital zircon content of the sandstones: Proterozoic (1900-900 Ma), early Paleozoic (500-400 Ma), late Paleozoic-Early Triassic (288-235 Ma), Jurassic (180-151 Ma), Early Cretaceous (150-111 Ma), and Late Cretaceous-Paleogene (110-54 Ma). These grains were derived from several arc terranes, ranging in age from Permian to Paleogene, in western Mexico and the southwestern United States, from sedimentary rocks and possibly interbedded tuffs of the Sierra Madre Oriental orogen and from basement sources or their derivative sandstones of the southwestern United States. The petrographic and geochronologic provenance data corroborate existing models for derivation of much foreland detritus from arc sources to the west, identify the Sierra Madre orogen itself as an important source for sediment, and these data modify the Late Cretaceous-Paleogene paleogeography of Mexico to include a long, orogen-parallel fl uvial system with headwaters in the southwestern United States. The difference in average ages of the youngest grains in the sandstones and their inferred depositional ages is 10.5 m.y., indicating that the initial coarse fi ll of the foreland basin was derived from early Laramide uplift and eastward arc migration in northwestern Mexico and the southwestern United States.

Detrital zircon U-Pb ages of sandstones in continental red beds at Valle de Huizachal, Tamaulipas, NE Mexico: Record of Early-Middle Jurassic arc volcanism and transition to crustal extension

“…Radiometric data provide a critical means for understanding the geological history of deposits and their potential sediment source regions. Radiometric provenance techniques supplement mineralogical information acquired by more traditional petrographic methods, such as light and heavy mineral analysis or whole-rock geochemistry, providing a more complete and accurate characterization of sediment provenance (e.g., Dickinson and Gehrels , 2008a, 2008b, 2009aLawton et al, 2009). Young detrital zircon grain ages have the added potential of indicating maximum depositional ages of a stratigraphic unit (e.g., Dickinson and Gehrels, 2009b), which can indicate true depositional age, if syndepositional volcanism took place in the drainage network providing sediment to a basin or if zircons derived from eruptive ash fell into the basin.…”

Progressive, episodic deformation in the Mexican Fold–Thrust Belt (central Mexico): evidence from isotopic dating of folds and faults

“…Several studies (e.g. Pessagno 1969;Salvador 1991;Sohl et al 1991;Hernandez-Jaúregui 1997;Goldhammer 1999;Lawton et al 2009;Gray and Lawton 2011) indicate that the vast majority of clastic material found in turbidites deposited in cretaceous foreland basins are derived from Cretaceous carbonates progressively uplifted from western to eastern Mexico. On the western side of the studied section, in the ZB, the age of the Soyatal Formation (syn-tectonic turbidites) is constrained to be between middle Turonian and lower Campanian (Kiyokawa 1981; Hernández-Jaúregui 1997, Figure 3).…”

New constraints on timing of Hidalgoan (Laramide) deformation in the Parras and La Popa basins, NE Mexico

“…Cross section after Hon (2001). lithic grains were derived from an uplifted hinterland that exposed Lower Cretaceous carbonates to the west (e.g., Lawton et al, 2009).…”