Lithospheric loss in the Andean convergent margin

during the Triassic: geochemical evidence from igneous

rocks of northern Chile (24°30’ – 30°00’S).
Verónica Oliveros*, Paulina Vásquez, Christian Creixell, Javiera González, Mauricio Espinoza, Friedrich Lucassen
and Mihai. N. Ducea.
Departamento Ciencias de la Tierra, Universidad de Concepción, Edmundo Larenas 129, Concepción, Chile
Servicio Nacional de Geología y Minería, A. Santa María 0140, Providencia, Santiago, Chile.
Isotope Geochemistry Laboratory, GEOMAR, Universität Bremen, Germany.
Department of Geosciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA.
Universitatea Bucuresti, Facultatea de Geologie Geofizica, Strada N. Balcescu Nr 1, Bucuresti, Romania

*Contact email: voliveros@udec.cl

Abstract. Several volcanic, volcano-sedimentary and
plutonic units cropping out in northern Chile between 24°30’
and 30°S have been characterized petrographically and
geochemically. More than 50 new geochemical and isotopic
results from these units are presented and compared to
previous published data for Late Paleozoic to Late Jurassic
igneous rocks. We propose that the continental margin
underwent significant lithospheric loss, in a continuous
subduction setting, at some time during the Permian to the
Triassic. Delamination of the lithospheric roots of the
Paleozoic arc is a likely process to account for the
geochemical evolution of the magmas in the studied time
frame, although stretching of the continental plate, without
significant crustal growth due to arc magmatism or
sedimentary accretion is also a plausible scenario. The
westwards shift of the magmatic arc, located at the
Principal Cordillera during the Carboniferous to the Early-
Middle Triassic, to the present-day Coastal Cordillera could
have taken place at ca. 210 Ma.
Keywords: Triassic, subduction, magmatism,
geochemistry.
1 Introduction
Crustal growth at the present-day western portion of the
South-American continental plate margin has been
dominated by terrane accretion and subduction throughout
the Phanerozoic eon. For the Andean region, whereas the
existence of a subduction setting during the Late
Palaeozoic and from the Early Jurassic until now has been
relatively well proven, the nature of the margin evolution
from Late Permian to Late Triassic has been more difficult
to determine. Several authors have proposed geodynamic
changes in this time frame, particularly the interruption in
the subduction due to either terrane accretion (Mpodozis
and Kay, 1992) or extensional forces driven by Pangea’s
breakup (Uliana et al. 1989). The existence of voluminous
acid explosive magmatism during the Permian (the
Choiyoi group) after a regional scale orogenic event (San
Rafael orogenic phase) along with the development of
several hundred kilometers-long, NNW-SSE oriented,
continental basins in western Argentina and Chile during
the Late Permian to Triassic period, supported the idea of
arrested subduction (Franzese and Spalleti, 2001; Kleiman
and Japas, 2009). By the other hand, recent studies
proposed margin-parallel transpressional deformation of
the margin during the Triassic, associated to oblique
subduction (Kato and Godoy, 2015). The lack of a
recognizable chain of igneous units that could represent the
Permian to Triassic magmatic arc is also seen as an
evidence of this proposed tectonic setting.
In this work we present new geochemical and isotopic data
for volcanic and plutonic rocks of more than 10 geological
units ranging in age from Carboniferous to Early Jurassic,
that crop out in the Coastal Cordillera, Precordillera or
Principal Cordillera of northern Chile between 24°30’ and
30°S. These data are compared to a compilation of more
than 460 sets of geochemical results published from rocks
of Carboniferous to Late Jurassic in age, cropping out
mainly in Chile but also in Argentina between 18° and
40°S. Our results allow us to propose a model of
significant lithospheric loss in the proto-Andean margin
during the Triassic. This process would have taken place
after a major orogenic event in the Permian, without the
interruption of the subduction of oceanic lithosphere under
the South-American plate, as revealed by the dominant
calk-alkaline affinities of the Palaeozoic and Mesozoic
igneous rocks that compose the present-day Andean
forearc in northern Chile.
2 Methods, Samples, Results
Fifty-five samples of volcanic, subvolcanic and plutonic
rocks from Carboniferous to Early Jurassic units were
collected for petrographical and geochemical analysis. The
studied units in the Coastal Cordillera correspond to the
Llano de Chocolate Beds, the Canto del Agua, Agua Chica
and Cifuncho Fms and related subvolcanic bodies; as well
as Permian, Middle Triassic and Upper Triassic plutons.
The studied units in the Precordillera and Principal
Cordillera correspond to the Los Tilos and Guanaco Sonso
sequences, the La Totora, San Félix, Quebrada del Salitre,
Sierra de Varas, Cerro Guanaco La Tabla and Algarrobal
formations and related subvolcanic bodies, and the Guanta,
Chollay, Colorado and Punta del Viento plutonic
complexes and related dykes. Whole-rock major and trace
element composition were obtained through XRF and ICP-
MS for all samples, along with Sr-Nd-Pb isotopic ratio
measured by TIMS.
The petrography of the volcanic and subvolcanic rocks
indicates that they range from basalts to rhyolite, but the
most abundant lithologies are dacites. Basalts and basaltic-
andesites occur mainly in the Upper Triassic units (La
Totora, upper San Félix, Agua Chica, Sierra de Varas,
Guanaco Sonso and Quebrada del Salitre formations).
They have only porphyritic textures, with plagioclase,
clinopyroxene, hornblende and quartz as the main
phenocrysts. Groundmass is often largely altered and
consists of variable amounts of plagioclase, quartz, k-
feldspar, undetermined mafics and Fe-Ti oxides. Plutonic
rocks range from quartz granodiorite and tonalite to
granite, with few gabbros occurring in the principal
cordillera at ~30°S.
The geochemical results indicate that the majority of the
studied volcanic and plutonic rocks have calk-alkaline
affinities (Fig. 1a). The trend is observed either in the
major and highly mobile element contents or in the trace
and more refractory HFS (high field strength) elements.
There is a consistent enrichment in LILE (large ion
lithophile elements) over HFSE and marked Nb-Ta troughs
in all the studied samples. REE (rare earth elements)
patterns vary from very steep to flat with a systematic
decreasing in the LaN/YbN and LaN/SmN ratios from the
Carboniferous to the Lower Jurassic samples (Fig. 2d).
The isotopic composition of the rocks is variable, initial
87
Sr/86Sr ranges between 0.696 and 0.712 with over 95% of
the samples in between 0.701 and 0.709. Abnormal low
initial ratios are interpreted as extreme Rb loss due to
alteration. Initial 143Nd/144Nd ranges between 0.511848 and
0.512518 with over 95% of the samples in between
0.512470 and 0.512060 and initial εNd ranging between
+4.00 and -4.72. The isotopic composition of lead is less
variable, ranging between 18.67 and 18.33, 15.76 and
15.53 and 38.91 and 36.55, for 206Pb/204Pb, 207Pb/204Pb and
208
Pb/204Pb respectively.
3 Discussion
3.1 Magmatic sources and their evolution from
the Late Carboniferous to the Late Jurassic.
The observed geochemical signature would indicate that
the generation of magmas was controlled by fluid induced
melting of a depleted asthenospheric mantle source. Few
samples, specifically three samples of the Norian-Rhaetian
La Totora Fm., have transitional to alkaline affinities
and/or plot in the whithin plate or oceanic island fields of
the discrimination diagrams (Fig. 1b), but the remaining
samples fall within, or very close to, the volcanic arc
basalts of continental arc granites fields(Fig. 1b,c). This
pattern is confirmed when the analysed samples are
compared to the whole database.
An interesting feature of the igneous rocks from Late
Paleozoic to Triassic is their systematic shifts in specific
geochemical parameters that are linked to the extent of
lithospheric involvement in the magma sources. Thus,
LaN/YbN ratios of the studied samples decrease from 4.0 at
ca. 300 Ma to 3.0 at ca. 250 Ma and to 1.5 at ca. 200 Ma,
although the younger group has a large dispersion between
1.0 and 3.0 (Fig. 1d). A similar pattern is observed for the
whole dataset including previous published data (Fig. 1d).
This shift suggests that crust over the magmatic arc
became thinner from the Carboniferous to the Early
Jurassic. However, other key ratios that represent proxies
to crustal thickness, such as Sr/Y (Chapman et al, in press)
do not follow a decreasing pattern form the Carboniferous
to the Jurassic but rather the opposite.
The loss of the crustal or lithospheric signal in the
Paleozoic to Mesozoic Andean magmas is also evidenced
by their isotopic composition. Nd isotopes are a more
reliable proxy to the lithospheric component of arc
magmas than Sr or Pb since their ratios are little affected
by low grade metamorphism or hydrothermal alteration,
which is very common in Andean rocks. The εNd
parameter also decreases with time from Carboniferous to
Jurassic, a trend that is observed either for the set of
studied samples or the whole database (Fig. 1e). This
would imply a tectonic evolution that involved loss of
lithosphere and crustal thinning at some time by the end
the Paleozoic and beginning of the Mesozoic era.
Delamination or foundering of the arc roots is a process
that can account for this lithospheric loss.. This is a
plausible explanation taking into account that a major
trigger for this process is a previous crustal thickening, as
has been proposed for the Carboniferous-Early Permian,
associated to the San Rafael Orogeny. Another likely
scenario is the stretching of the lithosphere. For both cases,
regional Frontal cordillera geology (28°-29° S) suggest
major tectonic changes took place during the Early
Triassic, with evidences of extensional tectonics as
voluminous emplacement of mafic dike swarms at 240-230
Ma, onset of extensional basins (San Félix basin) and large
exhumation of basement and Early-Middle Triassic
plutons, covered by Late Triassic sequences, coeval with
extensional or transtensional deformation. This large
amount of uplift and exhumation processes is more able to
be produced by processes like buoyancy of the lithosphere
triggered by delamination rather than crustal stretching
(Ducea, 2011).
3.2 Westward shifting of the magmatic arc
during the Late Triassic?
New and previous published ages for volcanic and
volcaniclastic rocks of the Agua Chica, Canto del Agua
and Cifuncho Fms as well as the Algodones Granite and
Carrizal Bajo plutonic complex, indicate that the earlier
igneous activity in the Coastal Cordillera during the
Mesozoic era started at ca. 210 Ma (Welkner et al. 2006,
Espinoza et al., 2015). By this age, it is likely that the
magmatism in the present-day precordillera and Principal
Cordillera had diminished after the built-up of the Chollay
arc batholith during the Early-Middle Triassic (Salazar et
al., 2013) as evidence by the rather limited Upper Triassic
volcanic sequences and the absence of significant Upper
Triassic plutonic rocks in this area. Although few data are
available, the volcanic samples belonging to the Upper
Triassic La Totora Formation show a distinct geochemical
signature with transitional to alkaline affinities (Fig. 1b),
whereas geochemical features of subduction-related
magmatism are still present in these rocks. A similar
pattern is observed for the Upper Jurassic volcanic back-
arc units in northern Chile (Rossel et al., 2013) suggesting
that a back-arc setting for this region could have been
developed as early as the Uppermost Triassic and
consequently the Andean arc shifted to its actual position
during this time frame.
Acknowledgements
This work has been funded through the Fondecyt Grant
#1120715 (V. Oliveros, P. Vásquez, C. Creixell), the Plan
Nacional of the Servicio Nacional de Geología y Minería
and two Conicyt doctoral fellowships (M. Espinoza, J.
González).
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Figure 1. a) AFM diagram (Irvine and Baragar, 1971), b)Th-Hf-Nb diagram (Wood, 1980),and c) Rb-Yb-Ta (Pearce et al., 1984)
diagrams for the studied samples; d) LaN/SmN versus age and d) εNd(t) versus age for the studied units and the compiled database for
Carboniferous to Upper Jurassic units in Chile between 18º-40ºS. Symbols correspond to the analysed samples and colour lines mark the
field of all the results from the database, according to their assigned age (light blue: Jurassic, purple: Triassic, red: Permian, green:
Carboniferous). Lw: Lower, Md: Middle, Up: Upper, Cis: Cisuralian, Guad: Guadalupian, Lop: Lopingian, (E,N)-MORB: (normal,
enriched) mid-ocean ridge basalts, OIB: oceanic island basalts, AB: arc basalts, syn-COLG: syn-collisional granites, VAG: volcanic arc
granites, WPG: within-plate granites, ORG: orogenic granites.