SHRIMP U-Pb zircon age constraints on the Late Archaean tectonostratigraphic architecture of the Eastern Goldfields Superterrane, Yilgarn Craton, Western Australia

Crustal evolution, intra-cratonic architecture and the metallogeny of an Archaean craton

“…This material may represent preexisting Burtville Terrane crust which was thinned during extension at c. 2720 Ma. Felsic magmatism, while known to occur at 2720-2700 Ma in the Agnew-Wiluna belt (Barley et al 2003;Kositcin et al 2008), is relatively rare in comparison to the Kurnalpi Terrane, and is not represented in this dataset. This indicates the predominance of plumederived mafic -ultramafic magmatism at this time (Claoué-Long et al 1988;Nelson 1997;Barley et al 2003;Cassidy et al 2006).…”

“…The 2660-2650 group is the most widespread and was broadly synchronous with late Archaean volcanism, deformation and metamorphism (Cassidy et al 2002;Barley et al 2003;Kositcin et al 2008;Mole et al 2012). The 2640 -2620 Ma group is also common and appears to be the last magmatic event in the Yilgarn Craton, correlating with the craton-wide gold mineralization Kent & McDougall 1995).…”

“…7). (2) Both crustal blocks have been interacting (shared tectono-magmatic events and isotopic signatures) since c. 3100 -3000 Ma, as suggested by contamination of basalts with older unradiogenic crust (Said et al 2010;McCulloch & Compston 1981;Barley 1986), shared greenstone events (Burtville -Youanmi; Pawley et al 2012;Van Kranendonk & Ivanic 2008) and plume magmatism (Ivanic et al 2010;Kositcin et al 2008), as well as the isotopic work of Wyche et al (2012b), which demonstrated that after c. 2960 Ma the rocks of the Eastern Goldfields Superterrane and Youanmi Terrane were affected by contemporaneous magmatic events. These significant differences in crustal evolution between the Eastern Goldfields Superterrane and the West Yilgarn suggest that the Ida Fault represents a long-lived lithospheric boundary between two cratonic blocks (Swager 1997;Drummond et al 2000).…”

“…The Yilgarn Craton is one of the largest preserved pieces of Archaean crust on Earth (Cassidy et al 2006;) and records a history of continental crust from c. 4400 Ma (Jack Hills, Illara and Maynard Hills metasediments; Wilde et al 2001;Wyche et al 2004) to 2600 Ma (late, post-tectonic 'cratonizing' granites; Cassidy et al 2002;, and a supracrustal record dating from 3010 to 2650 Ma (Wilde & Pidgeon 1986;Wang et al 1996;Nelson 1997;Wang et al 1998;Witt 1999;Chen et al 2003;Robert et al 2005;Kositcin et al 2008;Ivanic et al 2010). The Yilgarn Craton is also one of the most intensely mineralized crustal terranes on Earth, with multiple gold, iron and nickel camps (Groves 1993;Groves et al 1995;Barley et al 1998Barley et al , 2003Barnes 2006a, b;Angerer & Hagemann 2010;Angerer et al 2012a, b;Fiorentini et al 2012;Duuring & Hagemann 2013a, b).…”

Age and significance of voluminous mafic–ultramafic magmatic events in the Murchison Domain, Yilgarn Craton

“…The pulses of dominantly tholeiitic mafic-ultramafic intrusive magmatism described here for the northern Murchison A range of models have been proposed to account for aspects of the formation of components in the Yilgarn Craton including: (i) plume models (Archibald et al 1978;Campbell & Hill 1988); (ii) rift models (Swager 1997); and (iii) arc-accretion models (Barley et al 1989;Myers 1995;Kositcin et al 2008). Although these models were primarily developed for the Eastern Goldfields Superterrane, they nevertheless must be assessed for their ability to account for tectono-magmatic processes in the adjacent Youanmi Terrane.…”