The Andes as a peripheral orogen of the breaking-up Pangea

Abstract

Formation conditions of the peripheral orogen are expressed most fully in the Central Andes, a mountain system almost not yielding in height to the Himalayan-Tibetan system but formed at the margin of ocean without any relations to intercontinental collision. The marine transgression and rejuvenation of subduction in the Early Jurassic during the origination of foldbelt at the margin of Pangea marked the transition to a new supercontinental cycle, and the overall further evolution began and continues now in the frame of the first half of this cycle. The marginal position of this belt above the subduction zone, the rate and orientation of convergence of the lithospheric plates, the age of “absolute” movement of the continental plate, variation in slab velocity, and subduction of heterogeneities of the oceanic crust were the crucial factors that controlled the evolution of the marginal foldbelt. At the stage of initial subsidence (Jurassic-Mid-Cretaceous), during extension of the crust having a moderate thickness (30–35 km), the Andean continental margin comprises the full structural elements of an ensialic island arc that resembled the present-day Sunda system. These conditions changed with the separation and onset of the western drift of the South American continent. Being anchored in the mantle and relatively young, the slab of the Andean subduction zone served as a stop that brought about compression that controlled the subsequent evolution. Due to the contribution of deep magma sources along with marine sediments and products of tectonic erosion removed to a depth, the growth of crust above the subduction zone was favorable for heating of the crust. By the middle Eocene, when compression enhanced owing to the acceleration of subduction, the thermal evolution of the crust had already prepared the transition to the orogenic stage of evolution, i.e., to the progressive viscoplastic shortening and swelling of the mechanically weakened lower crust and the concomitant reverse faulting and thrusting of the upper crust. The general compression of the Central Andes by more than 250 km relative to the stop created by the oceanic slab accommodated up to 40% of the western continental drift over this time and increased the thickness of the crust up to 65–75 km. It is suggested that the onset of fast uplift and growth of the mountain edifice 12–10 Ma ago was predetermined by the approach of the submarine Juan Fernandez Ridge in the south and the Nazca Ridge in the north toward the continental margin and their involvement in subduction. As a result, the Central Andes were transformed into a region of advanced shortening and vigorous orogeny.