Paleozoic Laurentia-Gondwana interaction and the origin of the Appalachian-Andean mountain system

Abstract

Laurentia, the rift-bounded Precambrian nucleus of North America, may have broken out from a Neoproterozoic supercontinent between East and West Gondwana. Several lines of evidence suggest that the Appalachian margin of Laurentia subsequently collided with the proto-Andean margin of the amalgamated Gondwana supercontinent in different relative positions during early and mid-Paleozoic time, in route to final docking against northwest Africa to complete the assembly of Pangea. Hence the Appalachian and Andean orogens may have originated as a single mountain system. The overall hypothesis retains the same paleomagnetic and paleobiogeographic controls as previous global reconstructions for the Paleozoic Era. Laurentia-Gondwana collisions may help to explain contemporaneous unconformities in the Paleozoic sedimentaiy cover of the Laurentian, Gondwanan, and Baltic cratons.

Treatise Online, no. 38: Part E, Revised, Volume 4, Chapter 18: General features of the Archaeocyatha

“…Among global paleogeographic reconstructions proposed for the early Cambrian (e.g., roZ A n o v , 1984; Z o n e n s h A i n , KuZmin, & Kononov, 1985;scoTese & mcKerroW, 1990;courJAulT-rADé, Debrenne, & gAnDin, 1992;KirschvinK, 1992;mcKerroW, scoTese, & brAsier, 1992;sToreY, 1993;DAlZiel, DAllA sAlDA, & gAhAgAn, 1994;TorsviK & others, 1996;KirschvinK, riPPerDAn, & evAns, 1997;liebermAn, 1997;smiTh, 2001;golonKA, 2002;meerT & liebermAn, 2008;rino & others, 2008), those that best fit the archaeocyathan distribution portray a postsupercontinental world (Rodinian or Pannotian) with the major epicontinental basins within the intertropical zone. The inferred pathways of archaeocyathan migration, coupled with the use of the Jaccard similarity coefficient applied to the total local Cambrian faunas, calculated for NemakitDaldynian-early Tommotian, early Atdabanian, and late Atdabanian-Botoman intervals, support those paleogeographic reconstructions suggesting the existence of East and West Gondwana in the early Cambrian, as proposed by moores (1991) and KirschvinK (1992), with their subsequent collision by the late early Cambrian (cAWooD, 2005;PAulsen & others, 2007), the rifting of Laurentia from the AustralianAntarctic margin, and the drift of suspect terranes toward Siberia (Debrenne, mAiDAnsKAYA, & ZhurAvlev, 1999).…”

Late Precambrian to Triassic history of the East European Craton: dynamics of sedimentary basin evolution

“…During the Dalslandian orogenic cycle, which spanned 1.2-0.9 Ga and is the time equivalent to the Grenvillian orogeny of North America (Gorbatschev, 1985;Gorbatchev and Bogdanova, 1993), Baltica was welded along Grenvillian-Dalslandian sutures in the west to Laurentia-Greenland and in the south to Amazonia and thus was incorporated in the Late Riphean Pangea (Hoffman, 1991;Dalziel et al, 1992).…”

Untitled

“…Durante el Ordovícico superior-Silúrico tiene lugar la orogenia Oelóyica (445 m.a., Ramos y Ramos, 1978y Moya y Salfity, 1982 que se interpreta como originada por los procesos colisionales entre Laurentia y Gondwana (Dalla Salda, 1992Dalziel et al, 1994y Dalziel, 1997 o entre Sierras Pampeanas Occidentales, el Sistema de Famatina y Sierras Pampeanas Orientales .…”

“…probablemente relacionada con la colisión del bloque alóctono de Chilenia (Ramos et al, 1984) o a Laurentia, mediante un proceso de transcompresión (Dalziel et al, 1994) reactiva antiguas zonas de cizalla como la Faja Milonítica TiPA (López y Toselli, 1993), generaría otras nuevas, como las del rumbo NO-SE de la Sierra de Velasco .…”