HR: 1340h
AN: T13D-1570    [Abstracts]
TI: Evidence From Detrital Zircon U-Pb Analysis for Suturing of Pre-Mississippian Terranes in Arctic Alaska
AU: * Moore, T E
EM: tmoore@usgs.gov
AF: U.S. Geological Survey, 345 Middlefield Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025, United States
AU: Potter, C J
EM: cpotter@usgs.gov
AF: U.S. Geological Survey, Denver Federal Center, Denver, CO 80225-0046, United States
AU: O'Sullivan, P B
EM: osullivan@apatite.com
AF: Apatite to Zircon, Inc., 1075 Matson Road, Viola, ID 83872-9709, United States
AU: Aleinikoff, J N
EM: jaleinikoff@usgs.gov
AF: U.S. Geological Survey, Denver Federal Center, Denver, CO 80225-0046, United States
AB: Detrital zircon U-Pb ages of pre-Mississippian sandstones were determined using SHRIMP and LA-ICPMS techniques for four key geographic parts of the Arctic Alaska terrane, northern Alaska. In the northeastern Brooks Range, a sample of quartz-rich turbidites from the Proterozoic Neroukpuk Quartzite yielded zircon ages ranging from 980 Ma to 2.9 Ga with clusters at 980-1100 Ma, 1680-1850 Ma and 2220-2660 Ma. Quartz and chert-bearing sandstone in the Tulageak well from Ordovician-Silurian argillite in basement beneath the North Slope yielded a broad spectrum of ages between 1.0 to 2.1 Ga and 2.8 Ga, including peaks at 1.0-1.2 and 1.5-1.7 Ga. Paleozoic zircons cluster at 390 and 440 Ma in this sample, indicating it is Devonian. Lithic sandstone from the Silurian Iviagik Group at Cape Dyer on the Lisburne Peninsula yielded a variety of ages from 450 to 1600 Ma, with a large peak at 475-600 Ma and several grains between 1.9 and 2.5 Ga. In contrast to the broad distributions of the latter two samples, zircons in metamorphosed Proterozoic-Cambrian(?) lithic sandstone from the an unnamed metagraywacke unit near Mt. Snowden on the Dalton Highway in the southern Brooks Range are largely 600-650 Ma with lesser clusters at 1050-1200 Ma and 1600-1900 Ga. Samples of quartz-rich Mississippian sandstone at the base of the unconformably overlying Mississippian to Triassic Ellesmerian sequence near three of the pre-Mississippian sample locations were also analyzed. Mississippian sandstones from the West Dease well (near the Tulageak well) and at Cape Dyer on the Lisburne Peninsula display zircon distributions similar to those found in the underlying pre-Mississippian samples, indicating the Mississippian clastic strata are locally derived and that the observed zircon distributions are representative of a broad area. However, the Mississippian Kekiktuk Conglomerate, which rests on the Neroukpuk Quartzite in the northeastern Brooks Range, also contains a variety of ages between 560 and 900 Ma and 1200-1450 Ma that are not seen in the Neroukpuk sample, as well as a cluster of ages at 320-390 Ma. This sample indicates that the Neroukpuk is not the only source of zircons for Mississippian strata in the northeast Brooks Range. The samples from the northeastern Brooks Range contain zircon distributions similar to those reported from autochthonous North American strata in east-central Alaska and are strikingly different from those in western and southern parts of the Arctic Alaska terrane. Peaks at ~1.8 Ga are subdued or missing in the latter samples and 1.5-1.6 Ga grains, a magmatic gap in Laurentia, are present in the Lisburne Peninsula and North Slope samples. In view of these data, field and seismic evidence for significant Devonian deformation in northern Alaska, and likely plate configurations for that time, northern Alaska probably records early to mid-Paleozoic closing of the Iapatus Ocean and collisional suturing of non-Laurentian continental blocks with northwestern North America. This suggests that Devonian deformation in Arctic Alaska represents an important, northern element of the Caledonian deformational system that probably once linked up with Caledonian structures in the Canadian Arctic Islands and adjacent continental margin region.
DE: 8102 Continental contractional orogenic belts and inversion tectonics
SC: Tectonophysics [T]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting