Lower precambrian of the Keivy Terrane, Northeastern Baltic Shield: A stratigraphic succession or a collage of tectonic sheets?

Abstract

The Keivy Terrane in the northeastern Baltic Shield appreciably differs from the adjacent tectonic blocks. In the northwestern part of this terrane (the Serpovidny Range), an outlier of Paleoproterozoic supracrustal rocks called the Serpovidny structure is surrounded by Archean (?) Keivy high-alumina paraschists. As follows from structural and magnetic data, the Paleoproterozoic rocks are deformed into a tight sheath fold 8 × 2 km in size at the surface and 5 km in length along the sheath axis. Faults parallel to the boundaries of the layers and locally cutting them off at an acute angle are involved in folding as well. The outer boundaries of the Serpovidny structure are tectonic. This structure is complementary to a larger tectonic lens composed of the Keivy mica schists. It is concluded that all of the supracrustal rocks of the Serpovidny Range are in fact tectonic sheets and lenses deformed into sheath folds. The literature data show that kilometer-scale sheath folds occur throughout the Keivy paraschist belt and most likely were formed owing to thrusting of the Murmansk Craton onto the Keivy Terrane in the south-southwestern direction. Foliation and lineation related to thrusting have been established in the Archean silicic metavolcanics and peralkaline granites occupying the most part of the terrane. In contrast, the granitoids and gabbroanorthosites of the Archean basement, which form a block 90 × 20 km in the southwestern Keivy Terrane, were not affected by Paleoproterozoic deformation. In other words, a detached assembly of tectonic sheets composed of the upper and middle crustal rocks that underwent deformation at the initial stage of the Paleoproterozoic Lapland-Kola Orogeny and the Archean basement, which is free of this deformation, are distinguished. The depth of detachment is estimated at 20–25 km. The detachment of the upper and middle crust in the Keivy Terrane and its position in the structure of the Baltic Shield are consistent with a spatiotemporal succession that resulted in the formation of a Paleoproterozoic supercontinent and the Baltic Shield as its fragment. This succession began with the amalgamation and deformation of the Archean terranes in the northeast of the Baltic Shield during the Lapland-Kola Orogeny, the Keivy Terrane showing a record of the earliest reworking (1.97–1.93 Ga). The succession completed in the southern and southwestern parts of the shield (1.80 Ga) after the Svecofennian Orogeny, expressed in the accretion of island-arc terranes composed of Paleoproterozoic juvenile crust to the continent.