Disputed tectonic setting for the late Silurian–early Carboniferous development of the northern New England Orogen: detrital zircon ages suggest a continental margin arc association
Henderson, R.A., and Fergusson, C.L. (2024) Disputed tectonic setting for the late Silurian–early Carboniferous development of the northern New England Orogen: detrital zircon ages suggest a continental margin arc association. Australian Journal of Earth Sciences, 71 (6). pp. 778-795.
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Abstract
Devonian successions in the Calliope and Yarrol provinces of the northern New England Orogen in central to northern Queensland have a lithological assemblage and depositional environments indicative of a close association with a subduction-related volcanic arc. These rocks have been interpreted as related to island arc and backarc settings based on geochemical characteristics of magmatic rocks. We present new detrital zircon ages from the Devonian to lower Carboniferous successions of the Calliope and Yarrol province successions. Most samples have no or relatively few zircon grains extracted except for samples of quartz-rich sandstone in the Middle Devonian Erebus beds of Hunter Island, located 160 km north-northwest of Rockhampton and another sample in the Rockhampton district. The samples with abundant zircon, and some with less common zircon, have prominent peaks of mid Cambrian to Ordovician ages and are consistent with derivation from the northern Thomson Orogen where igneous rocks of this age are documented in the Charters Towers Province. These data indicate a connection between the Devonian arc-flank deposits of the northern New England Orogen and the Thomson Orogen, which had previously been well established for Carboniferous deep-marine sandstones of the subduction complex (e.g. Shoalwater Formation). These results favour an east-facing continental margin arc setting in the Devonian contra to intra-oceanic island arc settings previously proposed. Detrital zircon age spectra from sampled early Carboniferous units of northern New England Orogen association indicate a pulse of felsic magmatism of that age.
| Item ID: | 87422 |
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| Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
| ISSN: | 1440-0952 |
| Keywords: | Arc, Calliope Province, continental margin, detrital zircon, Devonian, New England Orogen, tectonics |
| Copyright Information: | © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an open Access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons Attribution-noncommercial-noDerivatives license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/),which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.the terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. |
| Date Deposited: | 02 Dec 2025 21:38 |
| FoR Codes: | 37 EARTH SCIENCES > 3705 Geology > 370511 Structural geology and tectonics @ 100% |
| SEO Codes: | 28 EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE > 2801 Expanding knowledge > 280107 Expanding knowledge in the earth sciences @ 100% |
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