Evidence from detrital zircons for recycling of Mesoproterozoic and Neoproterozoic crust recorded in Paleozoic and Mesozoic sandstones of southern Libya

Pre-Alpine evolution of a segment of the North-Gondwanan margin: Geochronological and geochemical evidence from the central Serbo-Macedonian Massif

“…9 and 12) does not necessarily imply Avalonian provenance, as similar ages were reported for volcanic rocks of the western Yangtze block (South-China craton; Zhang and Zheng, 2013, and references therein), from the Arabian-Nubian Shield and its cover sequence (e.g. Dixon, 1981;Avigad et al, 2003;Be'eri-Shlevin et al, 2012), and from Neoproterozoic and Palaeozoic siliciclastic sediments of southern Libya (Meinhold et al, 2011). Minor presence of this population throughout the Cadomian domain (Linnemann et al, 2007;Pereira et al, 2012a;Linnemann et al, 2014), including Minoan terranes (Zulauf et al, 2007;Zlatkin et al, 2013), was traditionally attributed to distant dispersion by large river systems (Zeh et al, 2001), and recently to a super-fan system shedding detritus with ca, 1.0 Ga-old zircons from the Transgondwanan supermountain towards the Gondwana margin (Meinhold et al, 2013).…”

A detrital record of the Nile River and its catchment

“…Avigad et al (2003) proposed that the source could be material transported from East Africa towards the margins of Gondwana by Neoproterozoic glaciers. We suggest that the original source may have been from a region since rifted off Gondwana, which may have also supplied zircons to, for example, the Neoproterozoic Arkenu Formation cover sediments of Libya, which contain grains of an appropriate age (Meinhold et al 2011).…”

“…Particularly debated is the origin of the c. 1000 Ma zircon population, for which an obvious significant basement source in the Saharan Metacraton or Arabian-Nubian Shield has not been recognized (Kolodner et al 2006;Meinhold et al 2011).…”

“…Libya; Meinhold et al 2011;Altumi et al 2013), Jordan and Israel (Kolodner et al 2006;Morag et al 2011)) have put forward contrasting Phanerozoic palaeodrainage models for these regions during deposition of the cover.…”

The relations between Gondwana and the adjacent peripheral Cadomian domain—constrains on the origin, history, and paleogeography of the peripheral domain

“…These age distributions resemble those of basement rocks of West and North Africa and Arabia (WNA) and in the Amazonian Craton, respectively, suggesting that they were located next to these areas. In older studies 0.9-1.2 Ga zircons were assumed to be confined to Avalonian blocks, but now it is known that they occur in N Africa as well (Avigad et al, 2003;Meinhold et al, 2011Meinhold et al, , 2013Dörr et al, 2015, and references therein).…”