Showing papers on "Gondwana published in 1991"

Pacific margins of Laurentia and East Antarctica-Australia as a conjugate rift pair: Evidence and implications for an Eocambrian supercontinent

Abstract: Evidence supports the hypothesis that the Laurentian and East Antarctic-Australian cratons were continuous in the late Precambrian and that their Pacific margins formed as a conjugate rift pair. Both margins extend for approximately 40° of latitude. They have a similar rift history throughout their length—i.e., Late Proterozoic rifting and Early Cambrian carbonate platform development. A geometrically acceptable computer-generated reconstruction for the latest Precambrian juxtaposes and aligns the Grenville front that is truncated at the Pacific margin of Laurentia and a closely comparable tectonic boundary in East Antarctica that is truncated along the Weddell Sea margin. These may prove to be critical, perhaps even unique, "piercing points" for relating the northern and southern continents. Geologic and paleomagnetic evidence also suggests that the Atlantic margin of Laurentia rifted from the proto-Andean margin of South America in earliest Cambrian time. Early Phanerozoic sea-floor spreading that isolated Laurentia from South America and East Antarctica-Australia in an Eocambrian supercontinent appears to balance convergence along the Mozambique suture which resulted in final amalgamation of the smaller Gondwana supercontinent at ∼500 Ma.

Southwest U.S.-East Antarctic (SWEAT) connection: A hypothesis

Abstract: A hypothesis for a late Precambrian fit of western North America with the Australia-Antarctic shield region permits the extension of many features through Antarctica and into other parts of Gondwana. Specifically, the Grenville orogen may extend around the coast of East Antarctica into India and Australia. The Wopmay orogen of northwest Canada may extend through eastern Australia into Antarctica and thence beneath the ice to connect with the Yavapai-Mazatzal orogens of the southwestern United States. The ophiolitic belt of the latter may extend into East Antarctica. Counterparts of the Precambrian-Paleozoic sedimentary rocks along the U.S. Cordilleran miogeocline may be present in the Transantarctic Mountains. Orogenic belt boundaries provide useful piercing points for Precambrian continental reconstructions. The model implies that Gondwana and Laurentia rifted away from each other on one margin and collided some 300 m.y. later on their opposite margins to form the Appalachians.

Multicyclic History of the Northern India Continental Margin (Northwestern Himalaya) (1)

Abstract: The geologic evolution of northern India is best recorded in the stratigraphic succession of the Zanskar Range (northwestern Himalaya), which represents the most complete transect through this ancient continental margin. Sedimentary history began in the late Proterozoic, and recorded a late Pan-African orogenic event around the Cambrian-Ordovician boundary, when the Gondwana supercontinent was eventually assembled. The following long period of epicontinental deposition in shallow seas linked to palaeo-Tethys lasted until the Early Permian, when a neo-Tethyan rift began to open between paleo-India and the Cimmerian microcontinents. Neo-Tethyan history can be subdivided into two sedimentary megasequences, both recording a major tectonic and magmatic event in the lower part. The first one began with breakup in the Late Permian and lasted until the end of the Jurassic. The second one started in the Early Cretaceous with the final detachment of India from Gondwana and the opening of the Indian Ocean, and ended with the India-Eurasia collision in the Early Eocene. The two megasequences can be in turn subdivided into six transgressive/regressive supersequences bounded by tectonically enhanced unconformities. Basal sandstone units of Early Permian, Late Permian, Norian, Callovian, Early Cretaceous, and Paleocene age are invariably associated with oolitic ironstones or reworked glauco-phosphorites, and mark the transgre sive part of each supersequence. Next, condensed nodular carbonates or shales with pelagic fauna are typically overlain by thick shallowing-upward marly units capped by regressive platformal carbonates. The six tectono-eustatic supercycles reflect successive rifting episodes which punctuated the progressive separation of India from the rest of Gondwana, and document the combination of plate/microplate reorganizations and eustatic, climatic, and oceanographic changes in the Tethyan domain. After the onset of collision between India and Asia close to the Paleocene/Eocene boundary, obduction of the remnants of the neo-Tethys ocean floor onto the Indian margin began, and the latter underwent multiphase deformation with fold-thrust shortening followed by heating and extension. After the main metamorphic event, ophiolitic nappes were re-thrusted and finally emplaced with their sedimentary sole on top of the passive-margin succession.

Arabian Plate Hydrocarbon Geology and Potential—A Plate Tectonic Approach

Abstract: Reported proven hydrocarbon reserves of the Arabian plate region at the start of 1991 totaled 663.2 billion barrels (B bbl) of oil and 1,325.4 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas (66.4% and 31.5% of the world's oil and gas reserves, respectively). More than 98% of these are concentrated in the northeast margin region between northwest Iraq and Central Oman and lie in reservoirs ranging in age from late Paleozoic to early Neogene. Additional reserves, however, increasingly are being established along the other Arabian plate margins and in intra-plate basins. Occurrence of reserves, age and distribution of the sediments that generated or preserved them, and the formation of the mainly large structural (and other) traps are linked intimately to differing histories of plate margin evolution. The proper understanding of these histories could lead to additional reserves being established. The Arabian plate margins evolved at different times, the first being the northeast passive margin. This permitted the almost uninterrupted accumulation of thick sediments over a vast area including areally extensive organic-rich source rock deposits as well as good reservoir and seal units. The north/northeast margin(s) became a col-lisional boundary and a new Levant margin became a transform boundary in the Neogene. Consolidation of the Afro-Arabian craton in the latest Proterozoic and Early Cambrian created a prominent north-south basement “grain” and a northwest-southeast (Najd) shear fracture system. Rejuvenations (affecting structures/sediment patterns) occurred in later periods and have controlled major hydrocarbon occurrences. From latest Proterozoic to late Paleozoic time, the present north/northeast Arabian plate margin region, Anatolia, central Iran and the Afghan and Indian plates formed part of the long and very wide northern passive margin of Gondwana. This region was intermittently covered by shallow epeiric seas and bordering lowland.

Geophysical studies of the West Antarctic Rift System

Abstract: The West Antarctic rift system extends over a 3000 × 750 km, largely ice covered area from the Ross Sea to the base of the Antarctic Peninsula, comparable in area to the Basin and Range and the East African rift system. A spectacular rift shoulder scarp along which peaks reach 4–5 km maximum elevation marks one flank and extends from northern Victoria Land-Queen Maud Mountains to the Ellsworth-Whitmore-Horlick Mountains. The rift shoulder has maximum present physiographic relief of 5 km in the Ross Embayment and 7 km in the Ellsworth Mountains-Byrd Subglacial Basin area. The Transantarctic Mountains part of the rift shoulder (and probably the entire shoulder) has been interpreted as rising since about 60 Ma, at episodic rates of ∼1 km/m.y., most recently since mid-Pliocene time, rather than continuously at the mean rate of 100 m/m.y. The rift system is characterized by bimodal alkaline volcanic rocks ranging from at least Oligocene to the present. These are exposed asymmetrically along the rift flanks and at the south end of the Antarctic Peninsula. The trend of the Jurassic tholeiites (Ferrar dolerites, Kirkpatric basalts) marking the Jurassic Transantarctic rift is coincident with exposures of the late Cenozoic volcanic rocks along the section of the Transantarctic Mountains from northern Victoria Land to the Horlick Mountains. The Cenozoic rift shoulder diverges here from the Jurassic tholeiite trend, and the tholeiites are exposed continuously (including the Dufek intrusion) along the lower- elevation (1–2 km) section of Transantarctic Mountains to the Weddell Sea. Widely spaced aeromagnetic profiles in West Antarctica indicate the absence of Cenozoic volcanic rocks in the ice covered part of the Whitmore-Ellsworth-Mountain block and suggest their widespread occurrence beneath the western part of the ice sheet overlying the Byrd Subglacial Basin. A German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR)-U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) aeromagnetic survey over the Ross Sea continental shelf indicates rift fabric and suggests numerous submarine volcanoes along discrete NNW trending zones. A Bouguer anomaly range of approximately 200 (+50 to −150) mGal having 4–7 mGal/km gradients where measured in places marks the rift shoulder from northern Victoria Land possibly to the Ellsworth Mountains (where data are too sparse to determine maximum amplitude and gradient). The steepest gravity gradients across the rift shoulder require high density (mafic or ultramafic?) rock within the crust as well as at least 12 km of thinner crust beneath the West Antarctic rift system in contrast to East Antarctica. Sparse land seismic data reported along the rift shoulder, where velocities are greater than 7 km/s, and marine data indicating velocities above 7 km/s beneath the Ross Sea continental shelf support this interpretation. The maximum Bouguer gravity range in the Pensacola Mountains area of the Transantarctic Mountains is only about 130 mGal with a maximum 2 mGal/km gradient, which can be explained solely by 8 km of crustal thickening. Large offset seismic profiles over the Ross Sea shelf collected by the German Antarctic North Victoria Land Expedition V (GANOVEX V) combined with earlier USGS and other results indicate 17–21 km thickness for the crust beneath the Ross Sea shelf which we interpret as evidence of extended rifted continental crust. A regional positive Bouguer anomaly (0 to +50 mGal), the width of the rift, extends from the Ross Sea continental shelf throughout the Ross Embayment and Byrd Subglacial Basin area of the West Antarctic rift system and indicates that the Moho is approximately 20 km deep tied to the seismic results (probably coincident with the top of the asthenosphere) rather than the 30 km reported in earlier interpretations. The interpretation of horst and graben structures in the Ross Sea, made from marine seismic reflection data, probably can be extended throughout the rift (i.e., the Ross Ice shelf and the Byrd Subglacial Basin areas). The near absence of earthquakes in the West Antarctic rift system probably results from a combination of primarily sparse seismograph coverage and, secondarily, suppression of earthquakes by the ice sheet (e.g., Johnston, 1987) and very high seismicity shortly after deglaciation in the Ross Embayment followed by abnormally low seismicity at present (e.g., Muir Wood, 1989). The evidence of high temperatures at shallow depth beneath the Ross Sea continental shelf and adjacent Transantarctic Mountains is supportive of thermal uplift of the mountains associated with lateral heat conduction from the rift and can possibly also explain the volcanism, rifting, and high elevation of the entire rift shoulder to the Ellsworth-Horlick-Whitmore Mountains. We infer that the Gondwana breakup and the West Antarctic rift are part of a continuously propagating rift that started in the Jurassic when Africa separated from East Antarctica (including the failed Jurassic Transantarctic rift). Rifting proceeded clockwise around East Antarctica to the separation of New Zealand and the Campbell Plateau about 85–95 Ma and has continued (with a spreading center jump) to its present location in the Ross Embayment and West Antarctica. The Cenozoic activity of the West Antarctic rift system appears to be continuous in time with rifting in the same area that began only in the late Mesozoic. Although the mechanism for rifting is not completely explained, we suggest a combination of the flexural rigidity model (Stem and ten Brink, 1989) proposed for the Ross Embayment and the thermal plume or hot spot concepts. The propagating rift may have been “captured” by the thermal plume.

Origin of the Rajmahal Traps and the 85°E Ridge: Preliminary reconstructions of the trace of the Crozet hotspot

Abstract: The 85°E Ridge is a buried aseismic ridge approximately parallel to and west of the Ninetyeast Ridge in the northeastern Indian Ocean. It was previously shown to be of probable volcanic origin emplaced on very young oceanic crust, but no satisfactory model of emplacement of the rocks was offered. We propose a model of origin of the Rajmahal Traps of northeastern India, the 85°E Ridge, and Afanasy Nikitin Seamount as the trace of the hotspot that now lies beneath the Crozet Islands in the southern Indian Ocean. This reconstruction places the Kerguelen hotspot, which formed the Ninetyeast Ridge, at the triple junction between Greater India, Australia, and Antarctica before the breakup of eastern Gondwana.

Late Palaeozoic deformation in central Africa: a result of distant collision?

Abstract: SEISMIC reflection profiles from the Cuvette Centrale (Central Basin) of Zaire show that a major contractional deformation affected a part of central Africa during the late Permian and early Triassic periods. At the same time, other regions of central Africa experienced extensional and strike-slip deformation and associated rift formation. The coexistence of such varied styles of tectonic activity over a large continental area resembles the Cenozoic tectonics of central Asia and northwest Europe. The intracontinental deformation seen in these latter areas is attributed to collisional processes at a distant continental margin1–3. By analogy, we argue here that deformation of central Africa in the late Palaeozoic period was a direct result of collisional processes some distance away at the southern margin of Gondwana.

African linkage of Precambrian Sri Lanka

Abstract: New age and isotopic data show that the high-grade basement rocks of Sri Lanka were not linked to the Archaean granulite domain of southern India but experienced their main structural and metamorphic development during the Pan-African event some 950 to 550 Ma ago. This occurred when West Gondwana and East Gondwana collided to form one of the longest collisional structures in the Supercontinent — the Mozambique belt that extends from Mozambique to Ethiopia and Sudan. A major tectonic boundary, interpreted as a thrust zone, divides the Highland/Southwestern Complex in the central part of Sri Lanka from the Vijayan Complex in the E and SE. The former is interpreted to represent the remnant of a once extensive passive margin extending west, in a Gondwana reconstruction, via Madagasgar to Tanzania and Mozambique. The Vijayan Complex may have been part of a separate continental margin plutonic assemblage, and its collision with the Highland/ Southwestern Complex marks the final amalgamation of East and West Gondwana into a supercontinent some 550 Ma ago. The Sri Lankan granulites cannot be correlated with the distinctly older granulites of the Eastern Ghats belt of India, and this suggests that Sri Lanka was situated close to the SE coast of Madagascar in a Gondwana reconstruction.

Tectonomagmatic controls on Gondwana break‐up models: Evidence from the Proto‐Pacific Margin of Antarctica

Abstract: Geochemical and isotopic data are presented that suggest the existence of a large, Middle Jurassic subduction-related magmatic province common to both the Antarctic Peninsula and southern South America. We argue that during the initial stages of Gondwana breakup, Pacific margin magmas were derived from an enriched lithospheric mantle source similar to that for the contemporaneous within-plate Ferrar-Tasman suite. Enriched lithospheric initial-rifting magmas were succeeded, in at least part of the Rocas Verdes basin, by transitional early drift magmas and then by entirely asthenospheric mid-ocean ridge basalt (MORB) magmas representing lithospheric rupture and seafloor spreading. We propose a plate interaction model for the initial stages of Gondwana breakup relating the broad zone of lithospheric mantle melting to a reduction in plate boundary forces. The change from Gondwanide compression to lithospheric extension in the Jurassic is linked to a change from shallow to steeply dipping subduction and to a slowing of subduction rates caused possibly by a decreasing age of the subducting plate. Ridge-trench interaction may have followed subduction of young, hot oceanic lithosphere, possibly causing a temporary cessation of subduction and a further reduction in plate boundary forces, thus facilitating breakup.

The Ordovician history of the Iapetus Ocean in Britain: new palaeomagnetic constraints

Abstract: New late Tremadoc—early Arenig palaeomagnetic results from SW Wales imply that S Britain (part of Eastern Avalonia) occupied a southerly latitude of c . 60°S in early Ordovician times. When combined with Scottish Ordoviaan palaneomagnetic data, which indicate a 15°S latitude, the results indicate that the British sector of the Iapetus Ocean reached n latitudinal width of c . 5000 km in Tremadoc—Arenig times, which was reduced to c . 3000 km by Llanvirn—Llandeilo (mid-Ordovician) times. The new data resolve two previous controversies in Palaeozoic palaeogeography. First, the high southerly palaeolatitude links Avdonia to Gondwana, marginal to W Africa, thus reconciling codlicting reconstructions based upon either palaeomagnetic or faunal/facies evidence alone. Second, reliable Llanvim palaeomagnetic data imply that Avlonia had rifted northwards by Arenig time, whereas Armorica remained proximal to northern Africa throughout the Ordovician. The combined data therefore establish that Avdonia and Armorica formed separate micro-continents when rifting from Gondwana.

Asian and south-western Pacific continental terranes derived from Gondwana, and their biogeographic significance

Abstract: The recent recognition of numerous small geological terranes in the Indo-Pacific region has revolutionised our understanding of geological and biogeographic processes. Most of these terranes rifted from Gondwana. The Shan-Thai terrane rifted from Australia in the Permian and collided with Indo-China in the Triassic. Parts of Sumatra and Kalimantan may have rifted from Australia in the Cretaceous and carried an angiosperm flora north. Other terranes, now dispersed in South-East Asia and in the Pacific were, at various times in the Cenozoic, part of the Australian continent. Faunal and floral mobilism to Fiji via the Solomons and Vanuatu was probably not difficult up to the late Miocene.

Tectonic and Depositional Model of the Arabian and Adjoining Plates During the Silurian–Devonian

Abstract: During the Late Ordovician and Early Silurian, the western part of the Arabian Peninsula was covered by polar glaciers that advanced from the south pole in African Gondwana. During this period, nondeposition, erosion, or marginal marine conditions prevailed in eastern and northern Arabia. When the glaciers melted in the Early Silurian, sea level rose sharply and the paleo-Tethys Ocean transgressed the Arabian and adjoining plates depositing a thick, organic-rich shale directly over the glaciogenic and periglacial rocks and related unconformities. The post-glacial sequence coarsens upward reflecting the passage of a coastline prograding northward from African and Arabian Gondwana to northern Arabia. A sea level drop in the Late Silurian placed the study area in a terrestrial environment; however, as sea level recovered in the Early Devonian, a carbonate sequence blanketed most of the area. The transgression, however, was interrupted by regional uplift and local orogenic movements in the Middle and Late Devonian. These movements constitute the onset of Hercynian tectonism, which resulted in erosion of the older sequences, depositional hiatuses, and regional facies changes.

Opposite thrust systems in northern Victoria Land, Antarctica: Imprints of Gondwana's Paleozoic accretion

Abstract: Two major thrust systems with contrasting senses of displacement transect the Wilson terrane crust of northern Victoria Land, Antarctica. Along both mylonitic shear zones the central high-grade metamorphic basement is detached and thrust divergently toward the west and east over synorogenic, lower grade fore-arc and back-arc basin sedimentary rocks, respectively. Deformation was preceded by pervasive high-temperature-low-pressure metamorphism. Granites intruded the basement prekinematically and postkinematically. The structures are interpreted as results of early Paleozoic subduction of the paleo-Pacific oceanic crust under the Antarctic craton.

Geological history of the Bengal geosyncline

Abstract: The Bengal Geosyncline is the combined sediment accumulations of the Bengal Basin, the Bengal and Nicobar Fans and the older continental rise deposits which underlie the Bay of Bengal. The history of this huge sedimentary complex can be traced from its rift origin and the dispersal of the fragments of Gondwana land, to accretion into the Sunda Orogen. India separated from the rest of eastern Gondwanaland in early Cretaceous while Australia and Antarctica remained together. In late Cretaceous, about 90-95 Ma, the first slow separation occurred between Australia and Antarctica and a major plate reorganization occurred.