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SHRIMP and conventional zircon dating place temporal constraints on the evolution of the Cretaceous Volcanic Arc system in central Cuba. The arc has a consistent stratigraphy across strike, with the oldest and deepest rocks in the south (in tectonic contact with the ∼5-10-km-wide Mabujina Amphibolite Complex [MAC]) and younger rocks in the north. The MAC is thought to represent the deepest exposed section of the Cretaceous Volcanic Arc and its oceanic basement in Cuba. We undertook a single zircon geochronological study of five gneisses and two amphibolites from the MAC and seven rocks from the Manicaragua Batholith, which intrudes both the MAC and the Cretaceous Volcanic Arc. A SHRIMP zircon age of Ma for a trondhjemitic orthogneiss (MAC) from the Jicaya River 132.9 ‫ע‬ 1.4 dates the oldest phase of granitoid magmatism in this area and the entire Caribbean (Antillean) region. A tonalitic gneiss collected near the previous sample yielded an age of Ma, and a further tonalitic gneiss had an age 123.9 ‫ע‬ 0.6 of Ma, with one inherited zircon at Ma. Two trondhjemitic orthogneisses from the central part 112 ‫ע‬ 2.1 1045 ‫ע‬ 17 of the MAC yielded ages of and Ma, whereas two amphibolites from the eastern part of the 93.8 ‫ע‬ 0.5 92.8 ‫ע‬ 0.7 complex provided similar ages of ca. 93 Ma and zircon inheritance at 315, 471, 903, and 1059 Ma. Two weakly foliated Manicaragua granitoids from the eastern part of the massif provided ages of and Ma, whereas 89.3 ‫ע‬ 0.45 87.2 ‫ע‬ 1.2 five unfoliated granitoid samples from the central and eastern part of the massif yielded ages of , 88.7 ‫ע‬ 0.7 , , , and Ma. Our age data support the view that the Mabujina Protholiths 87.4 ‫ע‬ 1.3 87.0 ‫ע‬ 0.6 84.2 ‫ע‬ 0.8 83.1 ‫ע‬ 0.8 are exotic and formed somewhere NNW along strike of the nonmetamorphosed Cuban arc since pre-Middle Hauterivian time (before ∼133 Ma). The MAC became part of the Cuban Volcanic Arc during the Turonian (ca. 90-93 Ma), when it was intruded by plutonic rocks of the Manicaragua Batholith (Turonian-Campanian; ca. 89-83 Ma). The geology and geochronology of central Cuba do not support the idea of a polarity reversal event at any stage of the Cretaceous Arc-building process. Because most of our dated samples come from the narrow Mabujina Belt, the polarity reversal model would imply that the axis of a newly developing arc (with opposite polarity) would spatially coincide with the older arc, which appears unlikely. Inherited Precambrian and Palaeozoic zircons in the MAC granitic rocks (similar to inherited zircon populations in the Guerrero terrane from central-western Mexico) suggest a Neocomian proximal setting close to a cratonic area (probably SW Mexico/Maya Block) for the protolith of the MAC relative to the synchronous Primitive Island Arc of central Cuba.

We thank Liu Jun for his comment on our recent paper (Wang et al. 2014) and are grateful for his calling our attention to this apparent contradiction, and we welcome the opportunity to reply. Based on the sensitive high-resolution ion microscope (SHRIMP) U–Pb zircon age for a volcanic tuff bed within the upper part of the Guanling Formation, we suggested in our study that the age of the fossil horizon of the Panxian fauna is 244 ± 1.3 Ma, which is 14 Ma earlier than the previously estimated age that Li, Rieppel & LaBarbera (2004) published in Science. However, Liu Jun argued that this conclusion is confused, that there is no 14 Ma difference and that there is agreement between the biostratigraphic data and the new radiometric age.

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