Geodynamic setting and geochemical signatures of Cambrian–Ordovician rift-related igneous rocks (Ossa-Morena Zone, SW Iberia)

An important rifting event, accompanied by massive igneous activity, is recorded in the Ossa-Morena Zone of the SW Iberian Massif (European Variscan Orogen). It likely culminated in the formation of a new oceanic basin (Rheic ocean?), remnants of which appear presently accreted at the southern margin of the Ossa-Morena Zone. Rifting propagated diachronously across the zone from the Early Cambrian to the Late Ordovician, but by Early Ordovician time, the existence of a significant tract of new ocean is evidenced by a breakup unconformity. Although early stages of rifting were not accompanied by mantle-derived igneous activity, a pronounced increase of the geothermal gradient is indicated by partial melting of metasedimentary protoliths in the upper and middle crust, and by coeval core-complex formation. Geochemistry of the main volume of igneous rocks, emplaced some million years later during more mature stages of rifting, suggests an origin in a variably enriched asthenospheric source, similar to that of many OIB, from which subsequent petrogenetic processes produced a wide range of compositions, from basalt to rhyolite. A tectonic model involving collision with, and subsequent overriding of, a MOR is proposed to account for the overall evolution, a present-day analogue for which lies in the overriding of the East Pacific Rise by North America and the rifting of Baja California.