Late Svecofennian sedimentary basins in the crystalline basement of NE Poland and adjacent area of Lithuania: ages, major sources of detritus, and correlations

The Pre cam brian base ment of Lith u a nia and NE Po land, much of which is metasedimentary paragneiss, can be ac cessed only by cores from deep bore holes. Ion microprobe dat ing of de tri tal zir cons from sam ples of these meta sedi ments and the geo chem i cal sig na tures of the rocks pro vide new in sights into their age and prov e nance. De tri tal zir cons from meta sedi ments from Jastrzebna and Monki have Pb iso to pic ages in the ranges 3.14–1.83 and 3.53–1.82 Ga, re spec tively. Sim i lar re sults have been ob tained from the Lith u a nian Lazdijai and Bliudziai paragneisses. About 30% of the ana lysed Pol ish de tri tal zir con cores are of Late Archaean age (2.90–2.60 Ga) and about 70% are Palaeoproterozoic (2.10–1.90 Ga), sim i lar to the age dis tri bu tions of de tri tal zir con from Svecofennian meta sedi ments ex posed in Cen tral Swe den and South ern Fin land. The youn gest de tri tal zir con sub-groups in di cate max i mum de po si tion ages of about 1.86 Ga, sim i lar to the ages of ex posed Svecofennian sed i men tary bas ins. Pos si ble source rocks of com pa ra ble ages and af fin i ties can be found within Fennoscandia, Green land and Sarmatia

Trans-Baltic Palaeoproterozoic correlations towards the reconstruction of supercontinent Columbia/Nuna

A comparative study of the central and southern parts of the Palaeoproterozoic Svecofennian orogen in the Baltic/Fennoscandian Shield and the platform area to the east and south of the Baltic Sea indicates that at least these parts of the orogen are built up of several NW-SE trending, 100-300 km wide tectonic megadomains separated from each other and complicated by major zones of mostly dextral shearing. The generation of these zones occurred successively between 1.86 and 1.75 Ga, concomitantly with continuing crustal accretion younging towards the southwest. Even considering the distorting presence of a number of microcontinents, this indicates the one-time existence and repeated episodic activity of a master subduction zone stepwise falling back to the present south-southwest. At 1.82-1.80 Ga, the oblique collision of protocontinents Volgo-Sarmatia and Fennoscandia interfered with the accretionary growth of the crust in the Svecofennian orogen. In the west, the system of Svecofennian tectonic domains and shear zones is delimited by 1.70-1.55 Ga orogenic belts marking the Laurentia-Greenland-Baltica margin of Columbia. Altogether, the available U-Pb zircon datings and studies of key rocks and structures in the South Baltic region allow more detailed Trans-Baltic correlation and the creation of new integrated models of the structural and tectonic evolution of the Svecofennian orogen in particular and northern Europe in general. The new findings will be important also in the continuing study of supercontinent formation and supercontinent cycles, and the drifting of Palaeoproterozoic protocontinents during the assembly of Columbia/Nuna. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved