TY - JOUR
T1 - Age and Stratigraphic Relationships of Structurally Deepest Level Rocks, Oman Mountains : U/Pb SHRIMP Evidence for Late Carboniferous Neotethys Rifting
AU - Gray, D.R.
AU - Gregory, R.T.
AU - Armstrong, R.A.
AU - Richards, I.J.
AU - Miller, John
PY - 2005
Y1 - 2005
N2 - Igneous zircons in felsic schist, or metatuff, infolded with mafic schist, calcschist, and quartz mica schist of the As Sifah lower plate window, NE Oman, have yielded a U/Pb SHRIMP crystallization age of 298 +/- 3 Ma. The metatuff was previously considered to represent Permian bimodal volcanism, but these data indicate that the magmatism is older and suggest that Neotethys intracontinental rifting on the Oman part of the Gondwana northern margin was initiated in the Late Carboniferous. This, combined with delta(13)C values of calcschists indicating a predominantly pre-Late Permian age for the basal lower plate metacarbonates, suggests that passive margin carbonate ramp development occurred in the Late Carboniferous/Early Permian during Neotethys oceanic spreading and not just in the Late Permian, as previously thought. The restricted occurrence of the metatuff to the Saih Hatat lower plate, a unique lower plate stratigraphy, and the unique delta(13)C values of the calcschists all suggest that the lower plate was certainly distal, and possibly exotic, to the Arabian Peninsula. The felsic schist sample was entrained within an eclogite megaboudin at As Sifah. The age relationships therefore suggest that the high-P rocks that reached pressures of up to 20 kbar and are now part of the lower plate of Gregory and coworkers were either part of a subducted Florida-style promontory as part of the attenuated leading edge of the Arabian platform or part of a subducted microplate that was originally caught in the developing southern Neotethys ocean some 1300 km from the margin.
AB - Igneous zircons in felsic schist, or metatuff, infolded with mafic schist, calcschist, and quartz mica schist of the As Sifah lower plate window, NE Oman, have yielded a U/Pb SHRIMP crystallization age of 298 +/- 3 Ma. The metatuff was previously considered to represent Permian bimodal volcanism, but these data indicate that the magmatism is older and suggest that Neotethys intracontinental rifting on the Oman part of the Gondwana northern margin was initiated in the Late Carboniferous. This, combined with delta(13)C values of calcschists indicating a predominantly pre-Late Permian age for the basal lower plate metacarbonates, suggests that passive margin carbonate ramp development occurred in the Late Carboniferous/Early Permian during Neotethys oceanic spreading and not just in the Late Permian, as previously thought. The restricted occurrence of the metatuff to the Saih Hatat lower plate, a unique lower plate stratigraphy, and the unique delta(13)C values of the calcschists all suggest that the lower plate was certainly distal, and possibly exotic, to the Arabian Peninsula. The felsic schist sample was entrained within an eclogite megaboudin at As Sifah. The age relationships therefore suggest that the high-P rocks that reached pressures of up to 20 kbar and are now part of the lower plate of Gregory and coworkers were either part of a subducted Florida-style promontory as part of the attenuated leading edge of the Arabian platform or part of a subducted microplate that was originally caught in the developing southern Neotethys ocean some 1300 km from the margin.
U2 - 10.1086/449325
DO - 10.1086/449325
M3 - Article
SN - 0022-1376
VL - 113
SP - 611
EP - 626
JO - Journal of Geology
JF - Journal of Geology
IS - 6
ER -