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Early Jurassic to Early Cretaceous Magmatism in the Coastal Cordillera and the Central Depression of North Chile

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Book cover Tectonics of the Southern Central Andes

Abstract

Central Andean mountain-building processes in an active continental margin setting can be traced back to late Proterozoic times. In the evolution of the Central Andes two major periods of different trend can be distinguished, the Preandean development which is characterized by continental growth, and the Andean development where destructive processes such as subduction erosion and crustal thickening prevailed. Both periods were associated with important magmatic cycles. The Preandean development is documented by a westward migration of magmatic arcs, starting from the Brazilian Shield and reaching the Coastal Cordilleran area with final magmatic pulses during the late Palaeozoic. The late Preandean magmatism was triggered by subduction processes, and initiated remelting of overlying relatively young crust (e.g. the Pampa Elvira complex in the Precordillera: 285 Ma, Sri ca. 0.7050). The change from accretionary to destructive processes is marked by the culmination of magmatic activity in the Coastal Cordillera during the Jurassic and early Cretaceous. This period coincides with maximum continental growth. Since the mid-Cretaceous magmatic belts have migrated back to the east. The first cycle of the Andean development is characterized by magmatic conditions that differ fundamentally from those of the late Palaeozoic. Mobilization and differentiation of primitive upper-mantle partial melts dominate magma genesis. The very first pulses of initial basics (HIB ca. 180 Ma, Sri 0.7033) with continental basalt affinities do not show subduction components and originate from upper-mantle decompressional melting during an extensional regime, presumably due to extremely oblique subduction and/or a greatly reduced subduction rate. The volcanic succession La Negra (JV ca. 183 Ma, Sri 0.7030), contemporaneous gabbroic intrusives like Coloso Coastal Gabbro Complex (CCG, ca. 183 Ma, Sri 0.7030) and post-dating granitoid intrusives (G I ca. 155 Ma, Sri 0.7031) are products of various differentiation processes from the same upper mantle source magma, but also show subduction components by the rise in LIL-element concentrations. This cycle terminated as magmatic activities moved into the Central Depression; here granitoid intrusives (G II ca. 80–74 Ma, Sri 0.7040) are structurally and compositionally similar to the G I granitoids, but some geochemical data suggest that their melts were slightly contaminated with crustal components or were even derived from arc-crust material which had been consolidated before (200 to 150 Ma).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. HPC Consult, Oraniendamm 64-72, D-1000, Berlin 46, Germany

    Siegfried Pichowiak

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  1. Siegfried Pichowiak
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  1. Institut für Geologie, Geophysik und Geoinformatik, Freie Universität Berlin, Malteserstr. 74-100, 12249, Berlin, Germany

    Klaus-Joachim Reutter , Ekkehard Scheuber  & Peter J. Wigger ,  & 

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© 1994 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Pichowiak, S. (1994). Early Jurassic to Early Cretaceous Magmatism in the Coastal Cordillera and the Central Depression of North Chile. In: Reutter, KJ., Scheuber, E., Wigger, P.J. (eds) Tectonics of the Southern Central Andes. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-77353-2_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-77353-2_14

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-77355-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-77353-2

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