The late Palaeozoic Gondwana glaciation

The glacial deposits of Gondwana are today spread over one whole hemisphere. On the re-assembled Gondwana continents they still occupy an area exceeding that of the Pleistocene glaciation. The onset of the glaciation in the different areas has not yet been dated satisfactorily. The earliest lower and middle Carboniferous glacial beds occur in the Andean belt and in eastern Australia, where high mountains may have existed at that time. During Stephanian-Sakmarian time, when the pole wandered over Antarctica, large ice sheets reached sealevel in all the major depositories. Palaeotopographical reconstructions allow the conclusion that some of the ice centres were supported by uplands which reached altitudes of up to 1,500 m above sealevel. Depending on their palaeotopographical positions the glacigenic sediments exhibit the full facies range to be expected between glaciated uplands and glaciomarine environments. There are indications that ice may have flowed from Africa into the Paraná Basin, and from Antarctica into the Great Karoo-Basin and into Australia. At least 12 advances and retreats have been recognized in the Paraná Basin. Closer to the ice centres the record is less complete. The retreats were probably more of an interstadial than an interglacial nature. There is some evidence that the final deglaciation proceeded in stages from South America over Africa to Antarctica. The ice centres were fed by moist air from the Pacific Ocean and the Tethys.

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Zusammenfassung Die glazialen Ablagerungen von Gondwana sind heute über eine ganze Hemisphäre verteilt. Auch auf dem rekonstruierten Gondwana nehmen sie noch ein Gebiet ein, welches das der pleistozänen Vereisung übertrifft. Die frühesten, unter- und mittelkarbonen Vereisungsspuren finden sich im Anden-Gürtel und im Tasman-Belt in Ostaustralien, wo zu dieser Zeit hohe Gebirgsketten existiert haben können. Während des Stephan und Sakmar, als der Pol sich auf der Antarktis befand, erreichten große Inlandeis-Decken den Seespiegel in allen größeren Ablagerungsbecken. Paläotopographische Rekonstruktionen erlauben die Schlußfolgerung, daß einige der Eiszentren sich auf Hochländern mit Höhen von bis zu 1500 m befanden. Die glazialen Sedimente zeigen, abhängig von ihrer paläotopographischen Position, alle zu erwartenden Faziestypen. Es gibt Hinweise, daß Eis von Afrika in das Paraná-Becken und von Antarktika in das Große Karoo-Becken und nach Australien geflossen sein könnte, Wenigstens 12 Vorstöße und Rückzüge sind im Paraná-Becken erkannt worden. In der Nähe der Eiszentren ist die Zahl geringer. Die Rückzüge hatten wahrscheinlich mehr die Natur von Interstadialen als von Interglazialen. Es gibt Hinweise, daß das finale Abschmelzen im unteren Perm in mehreren Phasen von Südamerika über Afrika nach Antarktika fortgeschritten sein könnte. Die Eiszentren wurden durch feuchte Luftmassen vom Pazifischen Ozean und der Tethys genährt.

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Résumé Les dépôts glaciaires de Gondwana sont répartis actuellement sur une hémisphère entière. Même sur le Gondwana reconstitué, ils occupent encore une surface qui dépasse celle de la glaciation pleistocène. Les traces de glaciation les plus précoces, èo- et mésocarbonifères se trouvent dans la ceinture andine et dans la ceinture tasmanienne d'Australie orientale, où des chaînes de montagnes élevées ont pu exister à cette époque. Pendant le Stéphanien et le Sakmarien, lorsque le pôle s'est trouvé dans l'Antarctique, de grandes nappes continentales de glace ont atteint le niveau de la mer dans tous les grands bassins sédimentaires. Des reconstitutions paléotopographiques permettent de conclure que quelques-uns des centres de glaciation se trouvaient dans des zones de montagnes ayant des altitudes atteignant 1500 m. Les sédiments glaciaires montrent, en fonction de leur position paléotopographique, tous les types de faciès que l'on peut attendre. D'après certaines indications, la glace aurait pu couler d'Afrique dans le bassin du Paraná et de l'Antarctique dans le grand bassin du Karoo et vers l'Australie. Au moins douze avancées et retraits ont été reconnus dans le bassins du Paraná. A proximité des centres de glaciation leur nombre est moindre. Les retraits avaient sans doute un caractère plus interstadiaire qu'interglaciaire. Certaines indications permettent de penser que la fusion finale pouvrait avoir progressé, au cours du Permien inférieur, d'Amérique du Sud vers l'Afrique puis vers l'Antarctique, en plusieurs phases. Les centres de glaciation ont été nourris par des masses d'air humides venant de l'Ocean Pacifique et de la Téthys.

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The Break-up of a Long-term Relationship: the Cretaceous Separation of New Zealand from Gondwana

After a prolonged period of convergent margin tectonics in the Late Paleozoic and Mesozoic, resulting in terrane accretion, uplift and erosion of the New Zealand segment of Gondwana, the region saw a rapid change to extensional tectonics in mid-Cretaceous times. The change in regime is commonly marked by a major angular unconformity that separates the older, often strongly-deformed subduction-related ‘basement’ rocks from the younger, less-deformed ‘cover’ strata. The youngest ‘basement’ strata locally contain Albian fossils, and the youngest associated zircons have been radiometrically dated at ca. 100 Ma. In general the oldest strata overlying the unconformity contain fossils of similar Albian age, and the oldest radiometric dates also give similar dates of ca. 100 Ma, indicating a very rapid transition between the two tectonic regimes.The onset of extension resulted in the widespread development of grabens and half grabens, associated in the northwest of the South Island with a metamorphic core complex. In the west and south, on the thicker and more buoyant crust of most of the South Island, the new basins were infilled with mainly non-marine deposits. Non-marine graben infill consists of locally-derived breccia deposited as talus or debris flows on alluvial fans, passing directly as fan deltas or via fluvial deposits into lacustrine deposits. Active faulting continued in some areas until the initiation of sea floor spreading in Santonian times. Post-subduction strata on the thinner continental crust of the northeastern South Island and eastern North Island (East Coast Basin) were mainly marine. Initial sedimentary deposits in the west of the basin, reflecting extensional tectonism, consist of coarse-grained debris-flow deposits or olistostromes, generally fining upwards as tectonic activity waned: those in the east, including allochthonous sediments derived from the northeast, are dominated by turbidites. Early Cenomanian (ca. 96–98 Ma) injection of intraplate alkaline igneous rocks in central New Zealand caused updoming, resulting in shallowing and local uplift of the basin floor above sea level. A long (ca. 10 Ma) period of slow subsidence and transgressive marine sedimentation interrupted by episodic relative sea level changes followed.This pattern changed in the Late Coniacian (ca. 87–86 Ma), with a sudden influx of coarse, transgressive sands in eastern New Zealand. This was immediately preceded in parts of the region by uplift and erosion, probably driven by convective upwelling of the mantle just prior to sea-floor spreading, resulting in a ‘break-up’ unconformity. In the Late Santonian (ca. 85–84 Ma), development of a new, diachronous, widespread low-relief erosion surface, overlain by fine-grained deposits accompanying a rapid rise in relative sea level, coincided with the beginning of sea-floor spreading, rapid passive margin subsidence, and final separation of New Zealand from Gondwana.     

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The dispersal of the Gondwana Super-fan System in the eastern Mediterranean: New insights from detrital zircon geochronology

We report here new LA-ICPMS detrital zircon U–Pb ages of a quartzite from the autochthon of Peloponnesus (Feneos locality), southern Greece. The rock classifies as a mature quartz arenite and belongs to an original shale–sandstone succession now metamorphosed into a phyllite–quartzite unit. Zircon age clusters at 0.52–0.75, 0.85, 0.95–1.1, 1.75–2 and 2.4–3 Ga point at the Saharan Metacraton and the Transgondwanan Supermountain as contributing sources; the youngest concordant grain is 522 Ma old. Our data collectively suggest deposition during the Cambro-Ordovician in a collisional setting and are in excellent agreement with those of the virtually intact Cambro-Ordovician sandstone–shale sequences of Libya (Murzuq and Kufrah basins) and the Middle East (Israel and Jordan), interpreted to have been deposited in the Gondwana Super-fan System which draped the northern Gondwanan periphery from ~ 525 to 460 Ma. By contrast, re-evaluating the available zircon age-distribution pattern and depositional setting of an analogous sequence forming the autochthon of north-central Crete (Galinos beds) we demonstrate that it was originally deposited in a completely different setting, i.e. in an accretionary/fore-arc complex outboard of the south Laurussian active margin (Pelagonia) during the Late Carboniferous. Comparing similar Cambro-Ordovician metasiliciclastic rocks from north-eastern Crete (Sfaka paragneiss), north-central continental Greece (Vertiskos terrane), north-western Turkey (central Sakarya terrane) and the Romanian Carpathians we show that their detrital zircon distribution patterns testify to an original depositional setting similar to that of Peloponnesus (Feneos), Libya and the Middle East. Using key time-frames from previously published palaeogeographic reconstruction models we are able to trace in space and time the Palaeozoic–Early Mesozoic wondering paths of the aforementioned sequences. Thus, time- and facies-equivalent rocks presently cropping out in the eastern Mediterranean share a common provenance from the Gondwana Super-fan System which was diachronously dispersed between Early Silurian and Early Triassic.