Provenance and paleotectonic setting of North American Triassic strata in Yukon : the sedimentary record of pericratonic terrane accretion in the northern Canadian Cordillera ...

• Main Author: Beranek, Luke P.
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2009
• Subjects: Yukon; Northwest Territories
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0052330; https://doi.library.ubc.ca/10.14288/1.0052330

Detrital mineral geochronology, trace element and Nd isotope geochemistry, and field studies provide constraints for the source and paleotectonic setting of Late Devonian to Late Triassic North American strata in the northern Cordillera. Late Devonian-Early Mississippian clastic wedge deposits in northern Yukon and Northwest Territories record the influx of northerly derived sediment from the Innuitian orogenic belt. Isotopic data suggest that Innuitian clastic material was consistently recycled into post-Late Devonian Cordilleran margin strata. Early to Late Triassic sedimentation in Yukon was related to Late Permian-Early Triassic collision of the pericratonic Yukon-Tanana terrane (YTT) with western North America. Permo-Triassic closure of a marginal back-arc basin, whose remnants comprise the Slide Mountain terrane (SMT), juxtaposed YTT against the ancestral North American margin. The age and nature of this collision is analogous to that of the Sonoman orogeny in the southwestern United States and argues ...