A brief history of the Rheic Ocean

Abstract

The Rheic Ocean was one of the most important oceans of the Paleozoic Era. It lay between Laurentia and Gondwana from the Early Ordovician and closed to produce the vast OuachitaAlleghanian-Variscan orogen during the assembly of Pangea. Rifting began in the Cambrian as a continuation of Neoproterozoic orogenic activity and the ocean opened in the Early Ordovician with the separation of several Neoproterozoic arc terranes from the continental margin of northern Gondwana along the line of a former suture. The rapid rate of ocean opening suggests it was driven by slab pull in the outboard Iapetus Ocean. The ocean reached its greatest width with the closure of Iapetus and the accretion of the periGondwanan arc terranes to Laurentia in the Silurian. Ocean closure began in the Devonian and continued through the Mississippian as Gondwana sutured to Laurussia to form Pangea. The ocean consequently plays a dominant role in the Appalachian-Ouachita orogeny of North America, in the basement geology of

SHRIMP U–Pb zircon dating of the Valencia del Ventoso plutonic complex, Ossa-Morena Zone, SW Iberia: Early Carboniferous intra-orogenic extension-related ‘calc-alkaline’ magmatism

“…1B), remarkably close to the accepted exhumation age, c. 330 Ma amphibole Ar-Ar (Dallmeyer et al, 1993;Castro et al, 1999). This age is significantly younger than the initial collision related to the closure of the Rheic Ocean during the latest Devonian-earliest Carboniferous, c. 370-350 Ma (Azor et al, 2008;Nance et al, 2010;Braid et al, 2011;Nance et al, 2012;Pereira et al, 2012b). So the protolith age does not fit with the BAA being a remnant of the Rheic Ocean.…”

Upper Devonian microvertebrates from the Canning Basin, Western Australia

“…This faunal exchange between areas was likely driven by the closure of the Rheic Ocean (Nance et al 2012;Domeier and Torsvik 2014) during the Late Devonian, culminating in an increased proximity of Laurussia and Gondwana (Young 2003;Burrow et al 2010;. This period also saw the rifting of the Palaeotethys resulting in a separation of the north China, Indochina, Tarim and South China blocks from Gondwana (Metcalfe 1984(Metcalfe , 2011.…”

Petrology and geochemistry of meta-ultramafic rocks in the Paleozoic Granjeno Schist, northeastern Mexico: Remnants of Pangaea ocean floor

“…As result dextral transpression took place and a Pennsylvanian-Permian magmatic arc was established (cf. [14,15,18,77,78]). The metamorphic age of the Granjeno Schist indicates that the metamorphic overprint and the second serpentinization event of the rocks of the present study may have taken place in an accretionary prism during Pennsylvanian to Permian times (cf.…”