Age and emplacement depth of intrusions in the southeastern Canadian Cordillera: Implications for Jurassic to Paleocene exhumation
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Synorogenic exhumation is important for understanding the evolution of mountain belts but is often difficult to discern because traditional thermochronology methods mostly date the final stages of exhumation. Intrusions emplaced during orogenesis provide an alternate method to elucidate these exhumation patterns since they preserve the timing and depth of their emplacement. We apply this concept the southern Omineca belt of the Canadian Cordillera by combining new and existing zircon U Pb and mica Ar/Ar ages from 43 intrusions as well as new and existing estimates of emplacement depth from 23 contact aureoles. Seventeen new zircon U Pb laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry results are presented in the paper, spanning the existing range of previous ages for four episodes of Phanerozoic magmatism in this region: Middle Jurassic (174–154 Ma), mid-Cretaceous (118–95 Ma), Late Cretaceous (78–76 Ma), and Paleocene (66–60 Ma). This new work has resolved two new distinct periods of Cretaceous magmatism at ∼100 and ∼ 76 Ma compared to what was previously considered to be a single mid-Cretaceous event (Bayonne magmatic suite). Furthermore, the Fry Creek batholith, previously considered to be emblematic of the Bayonne suite, the adjacent Shoreline stock, the ∼60 Ma Nelson stock located 40 km to the southwest, and the 55–62 Ma Ladybird magmatic suite form part of a newly identified phase of 66–55 Ma Paleocene magmatism in the region. Compiled intrusion ages were then combined with estimates of emplacement depth determined from metamorphic mineral assemblages in contact aureoles developed in pelitic host rocks. Jurassic intrusions typically have higher pressure staurolite + andalusite-bearing contact aureoles (3.3–4.0 kbar) corresponding to depths of 12.5–15 km, whereas Cretaceous and Paleocene intrusions mainly have lower pressure andalusite + cordierite-bearing contact aureoles (2.3–2.9 kbar) corresponding to depths of 8.5–11 km. These data indicate regional exhumation of 2–6 km occurred between the Middle Jurassic (180–160 Ma) and mid-Cretaceous to Paleocene (120–60 Ma) periods of Cordilleran orogenesis. In contrast, pluton emplacement depths changed by <2 km, suggesting minimal exhumation occurred in the southern Canadian Cordillera between the mid-Cretaceous and Paleocene. This extended lull in exhumation may be related to the partitioning of compressional deformation east into the foreland along a basal decollement beneath the study area during this time. • Emplacement age and depth of intrusions indicates exhumation during orogenesis. • New U–Pb geochronology revises magmatic suites in southeastern Canadian Cordillera. • Regional exhumation was 2–6 km from ∼175–100 Ma and 8–11.5 km from ∼60–0 Ma. • Updated regional map with pluton ages and metamorphic grades from contact aureoles.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".