The significance of the -Transbrasiliano-Kandi tectonic corridor for the amalgamation of West Gondwana

Abstract

The assembly of West Gondwana was completed by the end of the Precambrian, when the Amazonian, West African, So Francisco-Congo, Kalahari and Rio de la Plata cratons, as well as the Saharan metacraton and the Parnaba, Paranapanema and Luiz Alves cratonic fragments were united by means of the Brasiliano-Pan African orogeny, a geotectonic process that was active from the late Neoproterozoic to the early Paleozoic, related to the closure of a large oceanic domain, the Gois-Pharusian Ocean. Several accretionary complexes and possible microcontinents were trapped within the Brasiliano-Pan African mobile belts, and they have been accommodated within a few hundred kilometers of the Transbrasiliano-Kandi tectonic corridor. The supercontinent was already formed at about 600 Ma, as indicated by the existence of a very large Ediacaran epicontinental sea covering large areas of west-central Brazil and southern Uruguay along the margins of the Amazonian and Rio de la Plata cratons, demonstrating the connection of both cratonic units at that time and making the idea of a collisional suture closing a supposed Clymene Ocean unsustainable. In the Cambrian, a major plate reorganization occurred, being responsible for the initiation of subduction of the oceanic lithosphere along an open and unconfined Pacific Ocean. The resulting Pampean Orogeny correlates nicely in time with the Saldania, Ross, and Tasmanian belts along the southern Gondwana margin. Simultaneously, extensional-type post-tectonic episodes occurred repeatedly along the Transbrasiliano-Kandi tectonic corridor.