Abstract
This study reports new data on the petrography, total rock chemistry and U-Pb zircon geochronology of volcanic rocks of the La Quinta Formation that outcrop the western flank of the Perijá mountain range and the Cesar and La Guajira departments. The volcanic rocks consist of basaltic, andesitic, dacitic and rhyolitic lavas, and the volcaniclastic rocks consist of crystal-vitric and crystal-lithic tuffs and agglomerates of calc-alkaline affinity, formed in a continental margin arc setting. Geochronological data suggest that the La Quinta Formation was volcanically active for approximately 25 Ma, during which its composition varied from basaltic trachyandesites to rhyolites. U-Pb dating suggests that the volcanism began in approximately 191 Ma (Sinemurian age) and continued until approximately 164 Ma, with at least three periods of increased volcanic activity. The inherited zircons contain Triassic, Permian, Neoproterozoic and Mesoproterozoic populations, indicating that this arc was emplaced on rocks of the Chibcha Terrane along the South American paleomargin and that it is part of the same arc that formed the Jurassic volcanic rocks of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Cocinas and San Lucas mountain ranges and the Upper Magdalena Valley.
Highlights
The volcanic rocks of the La Quinta Formation outcrop at the northern end of the Colombian Cordillera Oriental [Eastern Ranges] in the Perijá mountain range, and they are part of the Jurassic volcanism that outcrops in the Upper Magdalena Valley in the San Lucas and Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountain ranges and in the Upper Guajira
This study reports new data on the petrography, total rock chemistry and U-Pb zircon geochronology of volcanic rocks of the La Quinta Formation that outcrop the western flank of the Perijá mountain range and the Cesar and La Guajira departments
The inherited zircons contain Triassic, Permian, Neoproterozoic and Mesoproterozoic populations, indicating that this arc was emplaced on rocks of the Chibcha Terrane along the South American paleomargin and that it is part of the same arc that formed the Jurassic volcanic rocks of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Cocinas and San Lucas mountain ranges and the Upper Magdalena Valley
Summary
The volcanic rocks of the La Quinta Formation outcrop at the northern end of the Colombian Cordillera Oriental [Eastern Ranges] in the Perijá mountain range, and they are part of the Jurassic volcanism that outcrops in the Upper Magdalena Valley in the San Lucas and Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountain ranges and in the Upper Guajira. This study reports new petrography (9), total rock chemistry (8) and U-Pb zircon geochronology (laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS)) (5) data, which, together with published geochronology data (González et al, 2015a; González et al, 2015b) and with total the rock chemistry of the La Quinta Formation, supplement the basic information on this unit and on the volcanism associated with the arc dated to the Lower-Middle Jurassic This new information is correlated with other volcano-sedimentary sequences that outcrop in Colombia, specifies the distribution of arc volcanism and, together with the analysis of the inherited zircons in volcanic rocks, improves our understanding of the basement distribution on which the arc is founded and of the geological evolution of the northern Andean volcanism during the Jurassic while furthering our knowledge of the Jurassic tectonic blocks that were scattered along the paleomargin and their distribution, according to Bayona et al (2010), Villagómez et al (2015), Zapata et al (2016) and Zuluaga et al (2015) The following variations in the model and arc development have been proposed: 1) an arc formed by a single subduction zone located west of the South American margin, which was formed between 209 and 114 Ma (Spikings et al, 2015); 2) a stationary continental margin arc formed by oblique convergence between the Farallón plate (an ancient oceanic plate) and the NW of South America that has been active for at least 40 Ma (Bustamante et al, 2016); 3) a continental arc and back-arc comprising Jurassic rock blocks of the Upper Magdalena Valley, Colombian Cordillera Central [Central Andes], and San Lucas and Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountain ranges (Villagómez et al, 2015; Bayona et al, 2010); 4) an erosive continental margin arc that was active for ~30 Ma exhibiting a compositional migration in a westeast direction (Rodríguez et al, 2018); and 5) a continental margin arc that fragmented and scattered along the paleomargin after its formation (Bayona et al, 2010; Villagómez et al, 2015; Zapata et al, 2016; Zuluaga et al, 2015).
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