Detrital zircon U-Pb ages of metasedimentary rocks from Sierra de Valle Fertil: Entrapment of Middle and Late Cambrian marine successions in the deep roots of the Early Ordovician Famatinian arc

We obtained detrital zircon ages from three metasedimentary rocks with siliciclastic protoliths that were buried to paleodepths of 20-27 km during Early Ordovician Famatinian arc magmatism. In all three samples. U-Pb zircon age distributions are polymodal but the dominant peaks make well-defined clusters, matching the ages of orogenic systems that characterize West Gondwana. The most prominent peaks of constituent age populations at 520 Ma, 600 Ma, and 1050 Ma reflect derivation from sources that are characteristic of the West Gondwana margin. Moreover, grains with Meso- and Paleo-Proterozoic ages appear as small fractions (<5%). The siliciclastic protoliths to metasedimentary rocks from the deep Famatinian crust are dominantly composed of detritus derived from two sources: 1) a nearby magmatic arc or a rapidly exhuming orogen, and 2) sedimentary recycling of Neoproterozoic-Lower Cambrian sedimentary successions broadly grouped as Puncoviscana Formation. Our findings reveal that granulite-facies metasedimentary rocks in the deep crust of the Famatinian arc have detrital zircon patterns closely resembling those found in nearby Middle to Upper Cambrian quartz-rich turbidite sequences from central Famatina, the Cordillera Oriental and the Puna. At the regional scale, these sedimentary successions yield maximum depositional ages corresponding to the Middle Cambrian (<520 Ma). This indicates that metasedimentary rocks in the Sierra de Valle Fertil were rapidly buried to deep levels after deposition. Our results are also consistent with the existence of a crustal scale paleo-suture located at the western margin of the Sierras Valle Fertil and La Huerta that explains the differences of detrital zircon age patterns between metasedimentary rocks in the Valle Fertil and age-equivalent sedimentary units in the nearby Cuyania Terrane. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.