Navegando por Autor "Karner, Garry David"
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Item Age of the Serra do Martins Formation, Borborema Plateau, northeastern Brazil : constraints from apatite and zircon fission track analysis.(2008) Morais Neto, João Marinho de; Green, Paul Frank; Karner, Garry David; Alkmim, Fernando Flecha deResults of apatite and zircon fission track analysis of samples from the Serra de Santana mesa provide quantitative constraints on the depositional age of the nonfossiliferous Serra do Martins Formation. This unit consists of sedimentary remnants preserved at high elevations on the Borborema Plateau and its distribution and age are considered important in understanding the geomorphological evolution and denudation history of northeastern Brazil following the early Cretaceous breakup. We also report apatite fission track results from post-rift units of the Potiguar Basin (Açu and Tibau formations). Apatite fission track analysis (AFTA) of samples from the Serra do Martins Formation suggests that they reached maximum paleotemperatures around 60°C, from which they began to cool some time between 30 and 0 Ma. Due to the high thermal gradients related to the prolonged Cenozoic volcanism in the study area, we hypothesize that the paleotemperatures modeled for those samples may be related dominantly to an anomalous heat flow, rather than to significant burial. Zircon fission track analysis (ZFTA) in two samples of the Serra do Martins Formation yields ages of 135±18 Ma and 165±40 Ma, but both samples show a significant spread in the data, and the youngest population of grains in these samples are characterized by ages of 83±5 Ma and 64±5 Ma, respectively. As the AFTA data show that these ages have not been reset after deposition, the zircon fission track ages must represent inherited provenance ages, demonstrating that those sediments can be no older than Paleocene. Independent lithological observations provide additional support to reject a stratigraphic correlation between the Serra do Martins and Açu formations. Combining the AFTA and ZFTA results, and integrating available geological evidence, we suggest that the Serra do Martins Formation was deposited some time between 64 and 25 Ma (Paleocene-Oligocene). Modeled thermal history solutions from AFTA in the Serra do Martins Formation samples suggest a cooling event during late Cretaceous/early Paleogene, interpreted as reflecting exhumation of sediment provenance terrain. The resulting erosional products form the clastics for the Serra do Martins Formation, which were deposited on an extensive regional planation surface – the Borborema Surface.Item Timing and mechanisms for the generation and modification of the anomalous topography of the Borborema Province, northeastern Brazil.(2009) Morais Neto, João Marinho de; Hegarty, Kerry A.; Karner, Garry David; Alkmim, Fernando Flecha deThe results of apatite fission-track analysis in 14 granitic-gneissic samples from two regional transects across the Borborema Plateau, northeastern Brazil, show evidence for two dominant paleothermal events: a Late Cretaceous cooling event beginning sometime between 100 and 90 Ma, and a second cooling event in the Neogene. The distribution of the fission-track results suggests that the cooling events have a broad regional expression and are consistent with the geologic record in the Araripe Basin, western Borborema Province, which attests to a post-Albian uplift of the whole region. We hypothesize that the first event is due to the uplift and denudation of regional, permanent topography generated after the breakup of Brazil and Africa. Such topography is predicted by models of continental margin extension in which continental lithosphere thinning is followed by thickening of the adjacent hinterland lithosphere and crust (Kusznir, N.J., Karner, G.D., 2007. Continental lithospheric thinning and breakup in response to upwelling divergent mantle flow: application to the Woodlark, Newfoundland and Iberia margins. In: Karner, G.D., Manatschal, G., Pinheiro, L. (Eds), Imaging, mapping and modeling continental lithosphere extension and breakup. Special Publication 282, Geological Society, London, pp. 389–419.). In northeastern Brazil, this extension-engendered topography may have been amplified by magmatic underplating related to the Saint Helena and Ascension plumes. The Miocene cooling event (20–0 Ma) occurred at a time characterized by the transition from carbonate ramp to progradational clastic systems on the Pernambuco–Paraíba margin and the offshore Potiguar Basin. This same stratigraphic response characterizes the Neogene stratigraphy of many passive margins and attests to a global increase in the delivery of clastics to margins, the simplest explanation of which is a climate change that accentuated erosion of pre-existing topography. Thus, the present rugged landscape of northeastern Brazil is interpreted to be a product of this younger denudation event. A corollary of this study is that the history, distribution and delivery of clastics to the northern and northeastern margins of Brazil are a function of the regional development of the continental landscape during the Late Cenozoic.