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Geoscience ›› 2019, Vol. 33 ›› Issue (01): 112-120.DOI: 10.19657/j.geoscience.1000-8527.2019.01.11

• Petrology • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Detrital Zircon Geochronology and Its Geological Significance of Upper Permian Sandstones in Yushigou Area of Western Qilian Mountains, China

SONG Zhijie1(), LIU Wencan1, ZHANG Hongyuan1, LIU Changfeng1, LUO Kai1,2, WU Chen1   

  1. 1. School of Earth Sciences and Resources, China University of Geosciences, Beijing 100083, China
    2. Tianjin Municipality Water Conservation Survey and Design Institute, Tianjin 300204, China
  • Received:2017-12-01 Revised:2018-10-30 Online:2019-02-26 Published:2019-02-28

Abstract:

Yushigou area is located in the northeastern margin of the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau, and lies tectonically on the southern margin of the North Qilian orogenic belt. We conducted LA-ICP-MS detrital zircon U-Pb dating on the red sandstones from Yushigou. The results yielded four age groups at 260-350 Ma (peak at 314 Ma), 400-500 Ma (peak at 445 Ma), 1,700-2,000 Ma, and 2,200-2,600 Ma. Besides, two zircon grains were dated to be 800-1,000 Ma and another zircon to be 2,056 Ma.Zircons of 260-350 Ma show mainly magmatic (and minor metamorphic) features in CL imaging, reflecting the occurrence of Carboniferous to Early Permian magmatic-metamorphic events. Zircons of 400-500 Ma have mainly a magmatic origin, suggesting that the detrital provenance of the Yushigou sandstones were from arc magmatic rocks and syn-collisional felsic rocks. Zircons of 1,700-2,000 Ma and 2,200-2,600 Ma are dominantly metamorphic with old age information, indicating that the highly metamorphosed basement rocks were the detrital provenance of the sandstones. The few 800-1,000 Ma zircons indicate that the Neoproterozoic batholith had not been significantly exhumed. The youngest detrital zircon age from these sandstones (289±2 Ma) constrains the maximum deposition age of the Yaogou Group to the Early Permian. Comparing the rock features along the geological section, the strata likely belong to the Upper Permian Hongquan Formation. The broad age spectrum reflects the tectono-magmatic events in both the North Qilian orogenic belt and the South-Central Qilian block, and indicates that the Hongquan Formation has two detrital provenances.

Key words: North Qilian orogenic belt, Upper Permian, Hongquan Formation, detrital zircon, U-Pb dating

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