REAVALIAÇÃO DA EVOLUÇÃO GEOLÓGICA EM TERRENOS PRÉ-CAMBRIANOS BRASILEIROS COM BASE EM NOVOS DADOS U-PB SHRIMP, PARTE II: ORÓGENO ARAÇUAÍ, CINTURÃO MINEIRO E CRÁTON SÃO FRANCISCO MERIDIONAL

Abstract

This paper discusses new zircon SHRIMP (Sensitive High Resolution Ion Microprobe) U-Pb geochronological data for 19 key-exposures of several geological units exposed at the eastern border of the Southern São Francisco Craton and at the adjacent Proterozoic Mineiro and Araçuaí orogens. Samples were collected along several E-W transects, aiming at tracing the precise limit of the São Francisco Craton Archean basement, as well as assessing the extension of the successive proterozoic orogenic collages. Due to the complex geologic history and/or high grade metamorphism which most of the rock units investigated have undergone, zircon morphology and the U-Pb analytical data exhibit very complex patterns. These are characterized by a combination of inheritance, partial resetting and new zircon growth during high-grade metamorphism. As a consequence, very careful and detailed analyses of cathodoluminescence imagery were required to allow distinction between inheritance, newly melt-precipitated zircon and partially reset zircons, as well as between the ages of magmatic and metamorphic events. In the southeastern border of the craton 5 units yielded Archean crystallization ages ranging from ca. 3000-2700 Ma, with poorly constrained metamorphic ages ranging from ca. 2850 to 550 Ma. The TTG gneissic complex exposed to the east and south of the Quadrilátero Ferrífero, formerly ascribed to the Archean basement, have crystallization ages from ca. 2210 Ma to 2050 Ma, and can now be interpreted as representing pre- to syn-collisional magmatic phases of the Mineiro Belt. Metamorphic ages of ca. 2100 Ma and 560 Ma are also well constrained in zircon populations from these gneisses. The crystallization age of ca 1740 Ma observed for an alkaline granite of the Borrachudos Suite (intrusive into the Archean basement east of the Southern Espinhaço Range) confirmed previous conventional U-Pb data for this Paleoproterozoic rift-related magmatism. One of the major basement inliers within the Araçuaí Orogen, the Caparaó charnockitic granulite, revealed magmatic crystallization age of ca. 2195 Ma. Zircons from an amphibolite of the Pocrane Complex, also a basement inlier within the Araçuaí Orogen, yielded an age of ca. 1500 Ma. Both inliers furnished well-constrained neoproterozoic metamorphic overprint at ca. 590 Ma. The subalkaline gneissic granite from the Salto da Divisa Suite yielded a magmatic crystallization age of ca. 870 Ma, close to U-Pb ages of the continental rift magmatism found in the African counterpart of the Araçuaí Orogen. Four gneissic granites from the Araçuaí Orogen (three of them previously interpreted as part of the Archean/Paleoproterozoic basement) were dated in the range of ca. 560-570 Ma, and were correlated to the γ22 syn-collisional magmatism. Borders of some zircon grains from the older (ca. 570 Ma) dated unit (Nanuque Granite) yielded ages around 500 Ma, similar to U-Pb ages obtained from titanite, monazite and zircon in other localities from the Araçuaí Orogen. This youngest ages could be related to heating effects caused by melting of country rocks and ascent of magmas formed during the collapse of the orogen.