Reconstruction of ocean plate stratigraphy in the Gwna Group, NW Wales: Implications for the subduction–accretion process of a latest Proterozoic trench-forearc

Abstract

The Gwna Group in Anglesey island and Lleyn peninsula, Wales consists of a latest Proterozoic volcano-sedimentary trench mélange, which has a complicated accretionary structure, and is poorly constrained by isotopic ages. The mélange contains oceanic-trench rocks including pillow basalts, cherts, mudstones and sandstones, which have not previously been interpreted as ocean plate stratigraphy (OPS). We reconstructed imbricated OPS at 5 localities in the coastal Lleyn peninsula. In order to constrain the depositional U–Pb age of the upper clastic sediments, detrital zircons, separated from 9 clastic sediments, were analyzed with a Nu AttoM single-collector inductively-coupled plasma-mass spectrometer. The ages indicate that there are two Gwna Groups (maximum depositional ages of: 1 at 608–601Ma, and 2 at 564–539Ma) that were deposited between the late Neoproterozoic and the Middle Cambrian contemporaneously with dated calc-alkaline arc magmatism and regional metamorphism in the Anglesey–Lleyn complex. The age spectra of the detrital zircons show a prominent peak at ca. 650–600Ma, and several Proterozoic and Archean ages. To account for the older ages, we integrated our new isotopic data with published radiometric and fossil ages, and conclude that the clastic sediments at the top of the OPS were deposited in a trench on the western active margin of Avalonia when it was close to the Amazonian craton, and that the Gwna Group OPS began to be incorporated into an accretionary wedge in an active subduction zone in the latest Proterozoic.