Palynological evidence supporting widespread synchronicity of Early Jurassic silicic volcanism throughout the Transantarctic Basin

• Published in: Antarctic Science
• Main Authors: Unverfärth, Jan, Mörs, Thomas, Bomfleur, Benjamin
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 2020
• Subjects: Antarctic Science; Victoria Land
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0954102020000346; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0954102020000346

Throughout the Transantarctic Mountains, Early Jurassic silicic magmatism preceding the emplacement of the Ferrar flood-basalt province (Heimann et al. 1994) is documented by the increasing input of silicic ash into otherwise epiclastic, fluviolacustrine deposits of the Beacon Supergroup (see Elliot et al. 2017). Vertebrate biostratigraphy and radiometric analyses indicate a Sinemurian to Pliensbachian age span for silicic volcaniclastic deposits in the central Transantarctic Mountains (CTMs) (Elliot et al. 2017). For northern Victoria Land (NVL), radiometric geochronology and palynostratigraphy revealed that explosive silicic volcanism began with minor pulses during the early Sinemurian ( c . 195 Ma) and reached a peak phase beginning in the middle Pliensbachian ( c . 187 Ma) (Bomfleur et al. 2014). A basin-wide correlation of these widely separated age frameworks has so far been hampered by the scarcity of data on coeval deposits in southern Victoria Land (SVL). Here, we present new palynostratigraphic data from mixed epiclastic–volcaniclastic deposits in the Prince Albert Mountains that provide supporting evidence for the widespread synchronicity of silicic volcanic episodes preceding Ferrar magmatism.