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An Overview of Cape Fold Belt Geochronology: Implications for Sediment Provenance and the Timing of Orogenesis

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Origin and Evolution of the Cape Mountains and Karoo Basin

Part of the book series: Regional Geology Reviews ((RGR))

Abstract

The Cape Fold Belt (CFB) is a 1300 km long fold-and-thrust mountain belt along the western and southern coastlines of South Africa. A limited understanding of the sedimentary provenance history and poor constraints on the timing of deformation has restricted the ability to provide a coherent tectonic model for the evolution of the CFB. Provenance studies on the Cape Supergroup, which dominates CFB outcrop, are largely limited to U-Pb dating of detrital zircons, which indicate the Namaqua-Natal Metamorphic Complex and Pan-African orogenic belts as likely sources for much of the detritus. Early geochronological studies constraining the timing of deformation in the CFB utilized 40Ar/39Ar step-heating analysis of bulk mineral separates. In these studies, dominant age domains were interpreted as multiple episodes of deformation. More recent 40Ar/39Ar results, from single muscovite grains and aggregate samples, were interpreted in terms of a bimodal tectonic evolution (ca. 270 Ma and ca. 251 Ma) for the CFB. In the present study, preliminary high precision 40Ar/39Ar step-heating analyses were carried out on >100 single muscovite grains from the Cape Supergroup of the Eastern Cape area. These results identify a large detrital muscovite population >440 Ma, confirming sedimentary contributions from Pan-African aged rocks of the Saldanian Orogen and associated Cape Granites, and possibly the East African-Antarctic Orogen. Similar muscovite ages at ca. 253 (Ma) are interpreted as constraining the final stage(s) of CFB orogenesis. Intermediate ages between 255 and 440 Ma are attributed to mixed age populations of detrital and metamorphic micas and/or partial resetting/recrystallization of these components by the low-grade CFB metamorphism. The significant detrital population and presence of partially overprinted micas highlights the risks of using bulk mineral separates, as per previous studies. Collectively, the current geochronological data do not support discrete deformation events, but also do not rule out the possibility of earlier or long-lived deformation events. Consequently, available models for the timing of CFB deformation should be treated with caution.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Maarten de Wit, Peter Booth, Bastien Linol, and Warren Miller for their guidance and assistance in the field. Dr. Erin Matchan and Stan Szczepanski are thanked for technical assistance in the 40Ar/39Ar laboratory. Insightful and constructive comments were greatly appreciated from reviewers Jan Kramers and Maarten de Wit.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Earth Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, 3010, Australia

    Scarlett C. J. Blewett & David Phillips

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  1. Scarlett C. J. Blewett
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Correspondence to Scarlett C. J. Blewett .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, AEON-ESSRI Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa

    Bastien Linol

  2. Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, AEON-ESSRI Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa

    Maarten J. de Wit

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Blewett, S.C.J., Phillips, D. (2016). An Overview of Cape Fold Belt Geochronology: Implications for Sediment Provenance and the Timing of Orogenesis. In: Linol, B., de Wit, M. (eds) Origin and Evolution of the Cape Mountains and Karoo Basin. Regional Geology Reviews. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40859-0_5

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