Paleozoic ages and excess 40Ar in garnets from the Bixiling eclogite in Dabieshan, China: New insights from 40Ar/ 39Ar dating by stepwise crushing

Abstract

The 40Ar/ 39Ar stepwise crushing technique is applied for the first time to date garnet from ultra-high-pressure metamorphic (UHPM) eclogites. Three garnet samples from the Bixiling eclogites analyzed by 40Ar/ 39Ar stepwise crushing yield regular, predictable age spectra, and a clear separation between excess 40Ar and concordant plateau and isochron ages. All three age spectra begin with high apparent ages followed by step by step decreasing ages, and finally age plateaux with apparent ages in the range from 427 ± 20 to 444 ± 10 Ma. The data points constituting the age plateaux yield excellent isochrons with radiogenic intercept ages ranging from 448 ± 34 to 459 ± 58 Ma, corresponding to initial 40Ar/ 36Ar ratios from 292.1 ± 4.5 to 294.5 ± 6.7, statistically indistinguishable from the modern air. The high initial ages are interpreted to derive from secondary fluid inclusions containing excess 40Ar, whereas the plateau ages are attributed to gas from small primary fluid inclusions without significant excess 40Ar. The plateau ages are interpreted to approximate the time of garnet growth during initial UHPM metamorphism. Phengite analyzed by laser stepwise heating yielded a complicated two-saddle age spectrum with a scattered isochron corresponding to age of 463 ± 116 Ma and initial 40Ar/ 36Ar ratio of 1843 ± 1740 indicative of the presence of extraneous 40Ar within phengite. These concordant isochron ages measured on minerals diagnostic of eclogite grade metamorphism strongly suggest that Dabie UHPM eclogites were first formed in the early Paleozoic, during the same event that caused the Qinling–Northern Qaidam Basin–Altyn Tagh eclogites.