Role of the down-bending plate as a detrital source in convergent systems revealed by U–Pb dating of zircon grains: Insights from the southern andes and western italian alps

Abstract

In convergent zones, several parts of the geodynamic system (e.g., continental margins, back-arc regions) can be deformed, uplifted, and eroded through time, each of them potentially delivering clastic sediments to neighboring basins. Tectonically driven events are mostly recorded in syntectonic clastic systems accumulated into different kinds of basins: trench, fore-arc, and back-arc basins in subduction zones and foredeep, thrust-top, and episutural basins in collisional settings. The most widely used tools for provenance analysis of synorogenic sediments and for unraveling the tectonic evolution of convergent zones are sandstone petrography and U–Pb dating of detrital zircon. In this paper, we present a comparison of previously published data discussing how these techniques are used to constrain provenance reconstructions and contribute to a better understanding of the tectonic evolution of (i) the Cretaceous transition from extensional to compressional regimes in the back-arc region of the southern Andean system; and (ii) the involvement of the passive European continental margin in the Western Alps subduction system during impending Alpine collision. In both cases, sediments delivered from the down-bending continental block are significantly involved. Our findings highlight its role as a detrital source, which is generally underestimated or even ignored in current tectonic models.