Turbidite provenance in the Lower Palaeozoic Manx Group, Isle of Man: implications for the tectonic setting of Eastern Avalonia

Abstract

The provenance of turbidites from the predominantly Arenig-aged Manx Group has been constrained using petrographical and geochemical techniques. Petrographical analysis of sandstones reveals that mono-and poly-crystalline quartz grains of cratonic origin are dominant. Major, trace and rare earth element concentrations in both sandstones and mudstones complement the petrographical data indicating that the source of the sediments consisted of quartzose basement and mature sedimentary rocks. There is little evidence of a juvenile volcanic input but a minor palaeovolcanic component of active continental margin affinity is present. There are indications of a more immature character in the oldest units but, on the whole, geochemical data from the Manx Group suggest an overall passive margin setting. These results suggest that Eastern Avalonia was attached to Gondwana during deposition of the Manx Group and that Iapetus oceanic crust did not subduct beneath the region before the end of the Arenig.

Petrography and geochemistry of the Cambro-Ordovician Wajid Sandstone, southwest Saudi Arabia: Implications for provenance and tectonic setting

“…6-8). Nevertheless, the high value of CIA suggests transportation and recycling from sources located far away from the depositional basin (Nesbitt and Young, 1982), which in turn is consistent with a provenance from the interior of a stable craton (Dickinson et al, 1983;Burnett and Quirk, 2001).…”

“…Also, the petrographic characters are consistent with sandstones derived from an area of low relief on a stable shelf margin (Amireh, 1991). Such characters may also indicate that the sandstones were derived from a cratonic interior (Cassinis et al, 1979;Burnett and Quirk, 2001) and were deposited on a passive margin (Emilia and Arribas, 2004).…”

“…This in turn indicates a high degree of maturity of sandstones (Morton, 1985). These characters are diagnostic of a clastic passive margin facies (Burnett and Quirk, 2001).…”

Geochemical signatures of Mesoproterozoic siliciclastic rocks of the Kaimur Group of the Vindhyan Supergroup, Central India

“…The presence of heavy minerals like zircon and tourmaline and abundant monocrystalline quartz and, to a lesser extent, polycrystalline quartz suggests intensive chemical weathering of the igneous (plutonic) source rocks (Morton, 1985;Morton et al, 1992) and the recycling of the earlier detrital material. All these characters mentioned above are diagnostic of the clastic passive margin facies (Burnett and Quirk, 2001). The scarcity of feldspars and rock fragments suggests the source area for sandstones underwent a long period of intensive chemical weathering in a warm humid climate (Pettijohn et al, 1987).…”

Petrography and geochemistry of the late Eocene–early Oligocene submarine fans and shelf deposits on Lemnos Island, NE Greece. Implications for provenance and tectonic setting

“…More recently, major and trace element bulk-rock analyses have been used in several studies to reconstruct the tectonic and sedimentary setting of clastic sedimentary basins (Kutterolf et al, 2007). Since different plate tectonic configurations produce diverse magmatic suites (Bonin et al, 1993), of different chemical characteristics (which are transferred from the primary to the sedimentary rock) chemical patterns are used to discriminate geotectonic settings from sediments (Crook, 1974;Bhatia, 1983;Roser and Korsch, 1988), and have been applied in recent publications (Kroonenberg, 1994;Burnett and Quirk, 2001;Zimmermann and Bahlburg, 2003;Armstrong-Altrin et al, 2004;Wanas and Abdel-Maguid, 2006). The geochemical analysis of sedimentary rocks (such as matrix-rich sandstones) is a valuable tool for provenance studies, as long as the bulk composition is not strongly affected by diagenesis, metamorphism or other alteration processes (McLennan et al, 1993).…”