Unroofing history of the Sillai Patti granite gneiss, Pakistan: constraints from zircon fission-track dating

Abstract

A group of alkaline igneous rocks is exposed in the north of the Peshawar Plain, extending from Tarbela in the east up to Loe–Shilman near the Pakistan–Afghanistan border in the west. The alkaline rocks consist mainly of granites, syenites, gabbros, ijolites and carbonatites. Granitic gneisses of Paleozoic age are exposed at the Malakand and further westward at Sillai Patti. However, the fission-track dating studies on zircon, based on the present work, indicate that the age of the Sillai Patti granite gneiss is less than the absolute age of granite gneisses. Therefore, the zircon fission-track age of 24.28±2.97 Ma of the Sillai Patti granite gneiss, represents a time of post-metamorphic denudation history of the area, when these rocks passed through the 210°C isotherm, corresponding to a depth of about 6.7 km inside the earth's crust from their present position if a paleogeothermal gradient of 30°C/km is assumed to have prevailed. Our average fission-track zircon age of 24.28±2.97 Ma is very similar to the average fission-track zircon age of 25.4±0.7 Ma of Mansehra granites. Average cooling rates of the Mansehra and Sillai Patti granite gneisses have been computed to be (8.00±0.22)°C/Ma and (8.00±0.98)°C/Ma, while the average denudation rates of the Mansehra and Sillai Patti granite gneisses have been computed to be (0.262±0.007) and (0.274±0.034) mm/ yr , respectively, on the basis of zircon fission-track ages for the period between 25 Ma and the present time. This indicates that the two complexes have experienced similar average cooling/uplift-induced denudation histories during the last 25 Ma or so.