Ordovician-Silurian volcanism in northern Iran: Implications for a new Large Igneous Province (LIP) and a robust candidate for the Late Ordovician mass extinction

Abstract

Proxies such as mercury and Hg/TOC anomalies document signatures for temporal correlations between major pulses of the Late Ordovician mass extinction (LOME) event and a postulated Large Igneous Province (LIP) as the main cause of extinction. Herein, for the first time, we report a series of voluminous intraplate volcanic events of the Middle Ordovician-Silurian from northern Iran, representing the erosional and deformed remnants of a LIP as well as a robust candidate as the cause of the LOME. These volcanic rocks, distributed over a length of ca. 1700 km and more than 1000 m thickness in some cases, were erupted during initial rifting of the Paleotethys Ocean in northern Gondwana. Based on fieldwork, relative ages, and high precision U-Pb ID-TIMS dating results we have identified one plutonic (granitic) and six volcanic (mainly basaltic) phases of mostly short duration for this chain of magmatism. The onset of volcanic events at 468.70 ± 0.30 Ma (2σ) coincided with the earliest Darriwilian, followed by a huge bimodal volcanic event between the Sandbian-Katian boundary and 450.61 ± 0.27 million years ago, and the climax of volcanism occurred during the late Katian-Hirnantian. An approximate coincidence between the onset of basaltic eruption and weathering in northern Iran and the beginning of significant global decline in seawater 87Sr/86Sr during the Darriwilian Stage may be a sign of the initial volcanic activities of our newly identified LIP. We suggest that the Middle Ordovician-Silurian volcanic rocks from northern Iran, and other related places, are remnants of this newly proposed LIP (herein labeled the Alborz LIP), with high potential to be the main cause of environmental and climatic changes that led to the LOME.