Stratigraphy of the Southern part of the Sergipano Belt, NE Brazil : tectonic implications

Abstract

The Sergipano Belt (NE Brazil) is a ESE-WNW trending volcano-sedimentary wedge polydeformed and metamorphosed (700-600Ma) due to the collision of the Pernambuco-Alagoas Massif, to the north, with the Sao Francisco Craton, to the south, during the Pan-African/Brasiliano orogeny. According to previous, regional-scale studies, the belt comprises three longitudinal lithotectonic domains with cratonic, miogeoclinal and eugeoclinal affinities, respectively from S to N, separated by regional, WNW-ESE trending, generally high-angle thrust-strike slip faults. Divergent tectonic evolution models were produced based on interpretations for and against the lateral continuity between these domains. Detailed stratigraphic-structural analysis from a 1:50,000 scale mapping carried out (1987-1995) in a 4000km2 area encompassing the interface between the three domains and surrounding two basement gneiss domes in the southern part of the belt, revealed: (1) the lithostratigraphy of the rocks deposited in the cratonic and miogeoclinal segments; (2) innequivocal evidence for the sedimentological, structural and metamorphic continuity across the domains boundary faults; (3) the upper section of the sediments deposited in the cratonic domain records the deposition of coarsening-upwards mudstones, siltstones, arkosic sandstones and lithic wackes that spreaded from the craton, to the south, across the craton-basin interface and graded into metasiltites and phyllites towards the miogeoclinal basin, where they occur in the core of a major basement-cored antiform and are overlain by a distinct diamictite formation, thus building up a siliciclastic mcgascquence. The sedimentological characteristics and innequivocal stratigraphic position of these arkosic sandstones and lithic wackes do not fit in previously suggested thrust-fold belt/foreland basin models; (4) very strong evidence for the miogeoclinal and eugeoclinal domains being also continuous across their boundary faults, allowing to erect a new stratigraphic template for the Sergipano Belt. The data allow to interpret that sedimentation was tectonicaly controlled by the basement domes and normal faults likely to have been inverted during the closure of the basin. The origin of the upper section of the sediments deposited in the cratonic domain and the tectonic controls of the sedimentation have relevant implications for the evolution of both the Sergipano Belt and the Sao Francisco Craton.