Authors / CoAuthors
Gibson, G.M. | Champion, D.C. | Ireland, T.R.
Abstract
Mafic and ultramafic rocks hosted by metamorphosed deep marine sediments in the Glenelg River Complex of SE Australia comprise variably tectonised fragments of a late Neoproterozoic-earliest Cambrian hyper-extended continental margin that was dismembered and thrust westward over the adjacent continental margin during the Cambro-Ordovician Delamerian-Ross Orogeny. Ultramafic rocks include serpentinised harzburgite of inferred subcontinental lithospheric origin that had already been exhumed at the seafloor before sedimentation commenced whereas mafic rocks exhibit mainly E- and N-MORB basaltic compositions consistent with emplacement into a deep marine environment floored by little if any continental crust. Contrary to previous suggestions, these rocks and their metasedimentary host rocks are not a more distal correlative of the Cambrian Kanmantoo Group. The latter is host to basaltic rocks with higher degrees of crustal contamination and a detrital zircon population with a prominent peak at 500-600 Ma. Except for quartz greywacke in the uppermost part of the sequence, the Glenelg River Complex is devoid of detrital zircon, pointing to deep marine sedimentation far removed from any continental margin. Deep seismic reflection data support the idea that the Glenelg River Complex is underlain by a substrate of mafic and ultramafic rocks and preclude earlier interpretations based on aeromagnetic data that the continental margin hosts a thick pile of seaward-dipping basaltic flows analogous to those developed along volcanic margins in the North Atlantic.
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nonGeographicDataset
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78843
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- External PublicationArticle
- Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC)
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- Earth Sciences
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2014-01-01T00:00:00
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