Detrital Zircon U-Pb Data for Jurassic–Cretaceous Strata from the South-Eastern Verkhoyansk-Kolyma Orogen—Correlations to Magmatic Arcs of the North-East Asia Active Margin

• Published in: Minerals
• Main Authors: Andrei V. Prokopiev, Victoria B. Ershova, Daniel F. Stockli
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021
• Subjects: North-east Asia; Verkhoyansk-Kolyma orogen; magmatic belts; Late Mesozoic sedimentary basins; Sugoi synclinorium; Omsukchan (Balygychan-Sugoi) basin; Mineralogy; QE351-399.2; Okhotsk; Kolyma; Verkhoyansk; Murgal’; Yasachnaya; Omsukchan; Uyandina; Chukotka
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.3390/min11030291; https://doaj.org/article/88ccba367adf4881a32fb71a86ec44f1

We performed U-Pb dating of detrital zircons collected from Middle–Upper Jurassic strata of the Sugoi synclinorium and Cretaceous rocks of the Omsukchan (Balygychan-Sugoi) basin, in order to identify their provenance and correlate Jurassic–Cretaceous sedimentation of the south-eastern Verkhoyansk-Kolyma orogenic belt with various magmatic belts of the north-east Asia active margins. In the Middle–Late Jurassic, the Uda-Murgal magmatic arc represented the main source area of clastics, suggesting that the Sugoi basin is a back-arc basin. A major shift in the provenance signature occurred during the Aptian, when granitoids of the Main (Kolyma) batholith belt, along with volcanic rocks of the Uyandina-Yasachnaya and Uda-Murgal arcs, became the main sources of clastics deposited in the Omsukchan basin. In a final Mesozoic provenance shift, granitoids of the Main (Kolyma) batholith belt, along with volcanic and plutonic rocks of the Uyandina-Yasachnaya and Okhotsk-Chukotka arcs, became the dominant sources for clastics in the Omsukchan basin in the latest Cretaceous. A broader comparison of detrital zircon age distributions in Jurassic–Cretaceous deposits across the south-eastern Verkhoyansk-Kolyma orogen illustrates that the Sugoi and Omsukchan basins did not form along the distal eastern portion of the Verkhoyansk passive margin, but in the Late Mesozoic back-arc basins.