Textural Characterization of Sedimentary Zircon and Its Implication

Abstract

Zircon with highly refractory, as accessory, detrital minerals occurs in virtually all sediments and sedimentary rocks, has played a prominent and complex role in interpreting the history of sediments and source history of a deposit, paleogeography, and tectonic reconstructions (Qian Y.X.,et al.,2007a). The main use of CL imaging of Detrital zircon has been as an adjunct to U-Pb dating of zircons, which allows identification of different types of zircon domains ,then may be dated in situ within a spatial resolution of about 15~30μm. By using a SHRIMP(Sensitive High-Resolution Ion Microprobe) , this data analysis would be a powerful tool in understanding origin of the zircon , that is , the various geological processes(magmatism, deposition , metamorphism, hydrothermal alteration, metasomatic leaching of Th, U, and Pb) , their surrounding source terrane of known age may be traced and a geological evolution history of sedimentary basins may be established. In fact, the analyzed sample wouldn’t completely represent geological history by including evidence of all the possible provenances and their relationships to each other due to natural complexity of sample. It was mentioned that the analysis techniques involve the sampling protocol and interpretation of data and then show the application of detrital zircon studies to: (1) analysis of origin characteristics such as U-Pb isotopic analysis and composition, (2) determine on the using age of stratigraphic successions and to help recognize time gaps in the geologic records, (3) test regional paleogeographic reconstructions by origin analysis, and (4) reveal geological history relative with the mineral chemistry of detrital zircon, and reveal complexity in order to gain insight into natural processes.