Zircon and apatite U-Pb geochronology of the Paleoproterozoic (Eburnean) basement and late Neoproterozoic (Pan-African) metamorphism and magmatism from Port-Béni, Armorican Massif (France)

Abstract

By re-examining the historical outcrops of Port-Béni located in the Trégor unit of the North Armorican Cadomian belt, the present work delivers four new ages that provide additional constraints on the Proterozoic history of northern Brittany. It is established that granitic, porphyritic rocks crystallized at the end of the Rhyacian (Paleoproterozoic), 2038 ± 12 Ma ago, before being transformed into orthogneisses at a late Neoproterozoic (Ediacaran) age of 621 ± 2 Ma, which is a minimum age, given the retrograde alteration these rocks underwent. The age of ca. 1.8 Ga previously proposed for the protolith of the Port-Béni orthogneiss should be discarded, and these two new ages are consistent with most of those yielded so far by the other Icartian (i.e., Eburnean) basement relics from the Armorican Massif. The gneissic basement was then intruded and disrupted into xenoliths by a granodioritic magma that crystallized 604.5 ± 2.0 Ma ago. This age, slightly younger than previously thought, corresponds to the emplacement age of one of the main units of the North Trégor batholith − the Pleubian-Talbert unit −, part of the Trégor volcano-plutonic complex, which may have built up over a longer period than that indicated by the uncertainty associated with this age. Caution should be exercised in extrapolating this age to that of the whole complex. Finally, doleritic dykes, possibly resulting in two swarms previously thought to be Paleozoic in age, have crosscut this complex. One of the latest yielded an age of 597 ± 15 Ma, indicating that the Trégor doleritic dyking episodes also occurred during the late Neoproterozoic, in between ca. 605 Ma and ca. 580 Ma. As the doleritic dykes are of tholeiitic composition, which distinguishes them from the earlier calc-alkaline magmas, they suggest that the intra-arc extension, documented in the southern, adjacent Saint-Brieuc unit of the belt, also affected the Trégor unit. They may likely have fed northern equivalents of the lava flows from the Paimpol Formation (exposed in between the Saint-Brieuc and the Trégor units), when magma production became moderately influenced by the Cadomian (i.e., Pan-African) subduction and mostly dominated by extension, possibly as a result of a steepening of a north-dipping subduction slab. Indeed, a re-examination of the available geochemical and geochronological data in the light of our new results documents that arc-magma production moved progressively from north (Trégor unit) to south (Saint-Brieuc unit) over time, in the interval 605-580 Ma.