Autochthonous and allochthonous rocks in the Pistolet Bay area in northernmost Newfoundland

1968 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 501-513 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. F. Tuke

Rocks outcropping in the northernmost part of the island of Newfoundland belong to two sequences, which are partly contemporaneous and very different in lithology. One sequence consists of Lower Cambrian sandstones and Lower and Middle Ordovician carbonates and shales. The other sequence consists of graywackes, volcanic rocks, and ultrabasic intrusions, which are, in part, early Ordovician. This latter sequence is interpreted as allochthonous because it is underlain by major low-angle faults and because of its strong facies contrast with the first sequence. The allochthonous rocks occur in three separate klippen.The trend of slickensides, attitude of folds, and deflection of beds at fault surfaces all indicate that movement along the low-angle faults that underlie the klippen was to the northwest. The klippen probably originated from an area 60 km to the southeast, which is on strike with similar rocks in north-central Newfoundland.It is suggested that the klippen moved by gravity sliding in late Middle Ordovician time.

1993 ◽  
Vol 67 (5) ◽  
pp. 788-798 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jin Yugan ◽  
Hou Xianguang ◽  
Wang Huayu

The vermiform pedicle is one of the most distinctive organs of modern lingulids, but it is rarely preserved. Only two fossil specimens of lingulids with pedicle casts have been reported, one from the Ordovician and the other from the Devonian. No record of fossil pedicles of Lingulella and Lingulepis, the dominant Cambrian and Early Ordovician lingulids, is known. Fossil lingulids from the Lower Cambrian of Chengjiang County, Yunnan, suggest that the structure and function of the pedicle of the lingulids has not changed significantly from its first appearance. A comparison of fossil pedicle of lingulids from the Lower Cambrian, Chengjiang County (China), the Burgess Shale, Middle Cambrian, British Columbia (Canada), the Trenton Formation, Middle Ordovician, New York (U.S.A.), and the Devonian, Devonshire (England, U.K.) shows that the delthyrial area to which the pedicle muscles are attached was reduced in length through time until these muscles were completely embraced by the two valves.Two species, Lingulella chengjiangensis n. sp. and Lingulepis malongensis Rong, are described.


1981 ◽  
Vol 18 (5) ◽  
pp. 972-980 ◽  
Author(s):  
David R. Kobluk

In the Lower Cambrian Forteau Formation (middle Bonnia–Olenellus zone) of southern Labrador, cavities in archaeocyath patch reefs contain preserved coelobiontic endolithic sponges. Scallops and carbonate chips produced by sponge boring, spicules, and preserved endolithic sponge body fossils all point to the presence of endolithic sponges in Lower Cambrian reef cavities.The oldest previously described endolithic sponges are Early Ordovician in age and the oldest previously known reef interior bioerosion is Middle Ordovician in age. The presence of endolithic sponges in reef cavities of the Forteau Formation therefore extends both the record of endolithic sponges and of reef interior bioerosion from the Ordovician to the upper Lower Cambrian.


2012 ◽  
Vol 86 (3) ◽  
pp. 455-461 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas E. Guensburg

For many years the earliest record of the class Crinoidea was a single late Tremadocian genus. In the past decade, five crinoid genera were described from the early and middle Tremadocian, near the base of the Ordovician. Together these six genera represent a diverse assemblage with all but one expressing existing subclass apomorphies. Two of the recently described genera were initially assigned to their own order (plesion) Protocrinoida but not to a subclass. Here they are placed in the camerates based on apomorphies of the tegmen complex. Protocrinoids exhibit plesiomorphies unlike typical camerates. Two genera group with cladids, one expressing dendrocrinine apomorphies and the other cyathocrinine. One genus is placed within disparids, with iocrinid apomorphies.Based on its ancient age and trait mosaic, the protocrinoid Titanocrinus is designated as outgroup in a phylogenetic analysis using all other Early Ordovician and select Middle Ordovician taxa as an ingroup. Character compilation and phylogenetic analysis posit early class-level plesiomorphies inherited from an unknown ancestry but lost during subsequent crinoid evolution. Class-level apomorphies also emerge, some of which were subsequently lost and others retained. Results are generally robust and consistent with earlier subdivisions of the class, but supporting lower rank reorganizations. Strong support for the camerate branch low in the crinoid tree mirrors findings of earlier workers. Cladids branch from a series of intermediate nodes and disparids nest highest. Branching of disparids from cladids could be homoplastic.


1969 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 393-398 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. F. Cormier

The Coldbrook Group of southern New Brunswick is composed almost entirely of volcanic rocks and has been assigned a Precambrian age on the basis of field relationships. Rocks of the group are overlain by fossiliferous Lower Cambrian beds of the Saint John Group.Rubidium-strontium total-rock analyses of 46 samples of Coldbrook Group volcanic rocks have been carried out. Analysis of the data indicates the probable presence of two different isochron ages. One of these is apparently defined by those rocks in which the ratio 87Rb/86Sr is low, with values less than about 1.0. This isochron yields an age of 750 ± 80 million years, with an initial ratio 87Sr/86Sr of 0.7054 ± 0.0010. The other isochron is defined by rocks in which the value of the ratio 87Rb/86Sr is higher, with values greater than about 1.0. The age calculated from the second isochron is 370 ± 38 million years, with an indicated initial value for the ratio 87Sr/86Sr of 0.7135 ± 0.0010.The 750 million year age is interpreted to represent the time of extrusion of the Coldbrook volcanics. The 370 million year age appears to be secondary and related to metamorphism of the Coldbrook Group. This age is correlated with the Acadian orogeny, which strongly deformed this part of the northern Appalachians in Middle to Late Devonian time.


2003 ◽  
Vol 40 (8) ◽  
pp. 1137-1167 ◽  
Author(s):  
K M Bethune ◽  
R J Scammell

Results of stratigraphic, U–Pb geochronological, and geochemical study are reported for rocks in a 2800 km2 area along the southeastern margin of the Archean Rae Province on north-central Baffin Island. Archean rocks include a gneiss complex, two greenstone belts of the Mary River Group, and various younger plutonic rocks. The 3000–2800 Ma gneiss complex contains intrusions of orthogneiss, dated at 2780–2770 Ma. Intermediate-felsic volcanism in overlying greenstone belts occurred at 2740–2725 Ma and was accompanied and outlasted by calc-alkaline plutonism (2730–2715 Ma). Peraluminous plutonism at ca. 2700 Ma, possibly associated with low- to medium-pressure metamorphism, represents the culmination of the Archean tectonic cycle. Dating of metamorphic zircon and titanite in Archean gneissic rocks indicates that overprinting, high-grade metamorphism in the northwest part of the area (footwall of the Isortoq fault zone) is Paleoproterozoic (ca. 1820 Ma). A weaker, somewhat older thermal disturbance (ca. 1850–1840 Ma with large errors) is recorded in the hanging wall of this zone. Additional tectonothermal events at ca. 1500–1400 Ma and ca. 700 Ma may, respectively, correlate with Mesoproterozoic faulting and emplacement of the Franklin dyke swarm. Unlike their age-correlative counterparts in the Mary River area and on the mainland to the southwest, the greenstone belts at Eqe Bay lack abundant orthoquartzite and komatiitic volcanic rocks: calc-alkaline volcanic rocks predominate, suggesting a fundamentally different tectonic environment. Striking similarities, both in lithology and age, to greenstone belts of the Minto block of the Superior Province raises the question of Rae–Superior correlation.


1975 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 443-455 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Laurent

The ophiolites of southern Quebec are thrust sheets. Prior to their folding with the country-rock. they were emplaced as solid masses into the thick metasedimentary and metavolcanic geosynclinal prism of Notre Dame Trough, in Early Ordovician time. The occurrence of the ophiolites is controlled by their structural and stratigraphic position. Complete ophiolites occur as stratified sheets lying structurally above the Cambrian Caldwell Group, and they are overlain by a mélange assumed to be of Early Ordovician age. Dismembered ophiolites consist of peridotite sheets and lenses which may have been attached originally to the basal peridotite of the larger stratified sheets; they are tectonically intruded into Cambrian rocks.The stratified sheets have a simple, regularly-layered structure with no well developed sheeted-dike complex. Other feature s include a thin upper unit of gabbroic and basaltic rocks with a relatively thick ultramafic cumulate at the base and a thicker lower unit of Alpine peridotite. There is apparently no transition zone between the upper and lower units. All these features suggest that the ophiolites of southern Quebec represent possible fragments of an oceanic crust formed on a rapidly spreading ridge. It is assumed that they have been emplaced on the Early Ordovician continental margin by obduction and contemporaneously with the development of a subduction zone, which may have caused the magmatism that generated the adamellitic granites intruded into the ophiolitic complexes, and the calcalkatline volcanic rocks of the Lower to Middle Ordovician Ascot and Weedon Groups.


1997 ◽  
Vol 134 (4) ◽  
pp. 425-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. D. KEPPIE ◽  
J. DOSTAL ◽  
J. B. MURPHY ◽  
B. L. COUSENS

Palaeozoic volcanism in the Avalon Terrane of northern Nova Scotia occurred during three time intervals: Cambrian–early Ordovician, late Ordovician–early Silurian and middle–late Devonian. In the Meguma Terrane of southern Nova Scotia, Palaeozoic volcanism is limited to the middle Ordovician. Geochemical data show that most of these volcanic rocks are bimodal, within-plate suites. Initial εNd signatures range from +5.4 to −1.9 in the rhyolites and +6.8 to +2.7 in the basalts, a difference attributable to the absence or presence, respectively, of a significant crustal component. The data and regional tectonic settings of the Avalon and Meguma terranes suggest that the volcanism was generated in three different within-plate settings: (1) Cambrian–early Ordovician volcanism related to thermal decay of late Proterozoic arc magmatism during transtensional deformation; (2) middle Ordovician–early Silurian volcanism during sinistral telescoping between Laurentia and Gondwana where extensional bends in the Appalachians produced rifting; and (3) Devonian volcanism resulting from lithospheric delamination during dextral transpression and telescoping. In each setting, active faults served as conduits for the magmas. Nd isotopic data indicate that the source of the Palaeozoic felsic volcanic rocks is isotopically indistinguishable beneath southern and northern Nova Scotia and did not substantially change with time. This crustal source appears to have separated from the mantle during the Proterozoic, a conclusion consistent with the hypothesis that the Palaeozoic rocks in Nova Scotia were deposited upon a late Proterozoic oceanic–cratonic volcanic arc terrane. The Nd data, when combined with published faunal, palaeomagnetic and U–Pb isotopic data, suggest that the Avalon Terrane was peripheral to Gondwana off northwestern South America during Neoproterozoic and early Palaeozoic times.


2019 ◽  
pp. 72-80
Author(s):  
S. G. Samygin

Process of formation of the island-arc rear slope is considered on the example of the Upper Cambrian–Middle Ordovician arc found in the Chingiz ridge in eastern Kazakhstan. Its occurrence is shown at the end of volcanic activity in the island-arc structure, beginning at the end of the early Arenig (from the end of the Flos century of the Early Ordovician) with tephroturbidites appearance. After the cessation of volcanism, two sedimentation cycles were distinguished in the sedimentary section of the slope in the middle Ordovician: (1) transgressive when the island arc submerged, (2) and regressive when the Chingiz arc began to build up at the beginning of the Llanwyrn (Darrivilian) century. The sedimentation was repeatedly accompanied by landslide processes, which ended in the middle of llanvirna (darrivilia) with the disruption of tectonic-gravity plate composed of Upper Cambrian volcanic rocks with limestone in the sole, resulting in the formation of coarsely fragmented mixtite at the allochthonous mass frontier, the further sedimentation on the rear slope stopped. Keywords: the island-arc; rear slope; sedimentation cycles; landslide processes


1980 ◽  
Vol 101 ◽  
pp. 55-60
Author(s):  
J.S Peel

Fossiliferous Lower Cambrian clastic sediments in Warming Land and southern Wulff Land, central North Greenland, are overlain by about 600 m of mainly carbonates which have yielded Middle and Late Cambrian trilobites. About 560 m of succeeding carbonates and subsidiary clastics are tentatively correlated with sequences in Washington Land, to the west, which range in age from Early Ordovician to early Middle Ordovician. The Ordovician sequence is completed by limestones of the Morris Bugt Group, also originally defined from Washington Land.


1988 ◽  
Vol 25 (11) ◽  
pp. 1824-1833 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Kumarapeli ◽  
Karen St. Seymour ◽  
Hillar Pintson ◽  
Elizabeth Hasselgren

Allochthonous masses of basaltic lava flows and related tuffs are present in several localities in an approximately 30 km long segment of the western margin of the Granby Nappe, in southeastern Quebec. They occur either as numerous small blocks in the Drummondville wildflysch related to the nappe or as larger masses intercalated with sedimentary sequences of limestone and shale of probable Late Cambrian to Early Ordovician age. These latter occurrences and the associated sedimentary units form "island-like" areas within lithologies of the Granby Nappe consisting of Cambrian sediments that accumulated on the continental rise. Their overall characteristics suggest that they represent slabs derived from the shelf margin of Laurentia and incorporated into the cratonward-moving nappes during the Middle Ordovician Taconian Orogeny.The volcanic rocks are mainly transitional but include some alkali olivine basalts. There are some indications that their affinities are to basaltic rocks of seamount chains localized along leaky transform faults. The segment of the continental margin from which the volcanic rocks were derived originated in the latest Precambian times, by rifting involving a rift–rift–rift (RRR) triple junction. Thus, it was a likely location for deep-seated transverse fracture zones linked to ridge-to-ridge transform faults of Iapetus. Therefore, the best explanation of the volcanism is that it was localized along such fracture zones. This episode of Late Cambrian – Early Ordovician volcanism related to the Iapetus cycle is probably analogous to the recently documented Early Cretaceous volcanism related to the Atlantic cycle on the northeastern American margin.


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