Journal ArticleDOI
Origin of the Rheic Ocean: rifting along a Neoproterozoic suture?
J. Brendan Murphy,Gabriel Gutiérrez-Alonso,R. Damian Nance,Javier Fernández-Suárez,J. Duncan Keppie,Cecilio Quesada,Rob Strachan,J. Dostal +7 more
TLDR
The Rheic Ocean is widely believed to have formed in the Late Cambrian-Early Ordovician as a result of the drift of peri-Gondwanan terranes such as Avalonia and Carolina, from the northern margin of Gondwana, and to have been consumed in the Devonian Carboniferous by continent-continent collision during the formation of Pangea as discussed by the authors.Abstract:
The Rheic Ocean is widely believed to have formed in the Late Cambrian–Early Ordovician as a result of the drift of peri-Gondwanan terranes, such as Avalonia and Carolina, from the northern margin of Gondwana, and to have been consumed in the Devonian Carboniferous by continent-continent collision during the formation of Pangea. Other peri-Gondwanan terranes (e.g., Armorica, Ossa-Morena, northwest Iberia, Saxo-Thuringia, Moldanubia) remained along the Gondwanan margin at the time of Rheic Ocean formation. Differences in the Neoproterozoic histories of these peri-Gondwanan terranes suggest the location of the Rheic Ocean rift may have been inherited from Neoproterozoic lithospheric structures formed by the accretion and dispersal of peri-Gondwanan terranes along the northern Gondwanan margin prior to Rheic Ocean opening. Avalonia and Carolina have Sm-Nd isotopic characteristics indicative of recycling of a juvenile ca. 1 Ga source, and they were accreted to the northern Gondwanan margin prior to voluminous late Neoproterozoic arc magmatism. In contrast, Sm-Nd isotopic characteristics of most other peri-Gondwanan terranes closely match those of Eburnian basement, suggesting they reflect recycling of ancient (2 Ga) West African crust. The basements of terranes initially rifted from Gondwana to form the Rheic Ocean were those that had previously accreted during Neoproterozoic orogenesis, suggesting the rift was located near the suture between the accreted terranes and cratonic northern Gondwana. Opening of the Rheic Ocean coincided with the onset of subduction beneath the Laurentian margin in its predecessor, the Iapetus Ocean, suggesting geodynamic linkages between the destruction of the Iapetus Ocean and the creation of the Rheic Ocean.read more
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Journal ArticleDOI
The formation of Pangea
TL;DR: In this paper, a global plate tectonic model was developed together with a large geological/geodynamic database, at the Lausanne University, covering the last 600 Ma of the Earth's history.
Journal ArticleDOI
Geological reconstructions of the East Asian blocks: From the breakup of Rodinia to the assembly of Pangea
Guochun Zhao,Guochun Zhao,Yuejun Wang,Baochun Huang,Yunpeng Dong,Sanzhong Li,Guowei Zhang,Shan Yu +7 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors carried out geological and paleomagnetic investigations on East Asian blocks and associated orogenic belts, supported by a NSFC Major Program entitled “Reconstructions of East Asian Blocks in Pangea”.
Journal ArticleDOI
Evolution of the Rheic Ocean
R. Damian Nance,Gabriel Gutiérrez-Alonso,J. Duncan Keppie,Ulf Linnemann,J. Brendan Murphy,Cecilio Quesada,Rob Strachan,Nigel Woodcock +7 more
TL;DR: The Rheic Ocean is the most important ocean of the Palaeozoic as discussed by the authors, and its suture along the line of a former Neoproterozoic suture following the onset of subduction in the outboard Iapetus Ocean.
Journal ArticleDOI
Rift melting of juvenile arc-derived crust: Geochemical evidence from Neoproterozoic volcanic and granitic rocks in the Jiangnan Orogen, South China
TL;DR: In this article, a combined study of zircon U-Pb and Lu-Hf isotopes, mineral O isotope, whole-rock elements and Sr-Nd isotopes was carried out for Neoproterozoic volcanics and granites from the eastern part of the Jiangnan Orogen in South China.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Cadomian Orogeny and the opening of the Rheic Ocean: The diacrony of geotectonic processes constrained by LA-ICP-MS U–Pb zircon dating (Ossa-Morena and Saxo-Thuringian Zones, Iberian and Bohemian Massifs)
TL;DR: In this paper, a diachrony of Cadomian and related geotectonic processes along the northern realm of the Gondwana Supercontinent is modeled by making use of new LA-ICP-MS U-Pb ages from detrital zircons of sedimentary rocks of Late Neoproterozoic (Ediacaran) and Cambro-Ordovician sediments of the Ossa-Morena Zone (Iberian Massif) compared with those from the Saxo-Thuringian Zones (Bohemian Mass
References
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