New Apatite and Zircon (U-Th)/He Constraints on the Timing of Thrust-Related Exhumation in the Southern Bolivian (21˚S) Andes

Abstract:

Data suggesting rapid middle Miocene uplift of the southern Altiplano prompts resolving disagreements over the geometry, magnitude, and timing of Andean deformation in southern Bolivia (21°S) in order to test geodynamic responses of the thrust belt predicted by the Cordilleran cyclicity model. New apatite and zircon (U-Th)/He data combined with published apatite fission track data (AFT), new 1:50:000-scale mapping, and in-progress drafting of a balanced cross-section provide new insight into the geometry and timing of deformation, and the timing and rates of exhumation. Mapping was focused along an east-west transect through the Subandean Zone (SAZ), Interandean Zone (IAZ), and Eastern Cordillera (EC). Regional-scale folds (~10-20 km wavelength, ~4-6 km amplitude) in the SAZ exhume rocks as deep as Carboniferous above a 10-12 km deep decollemont in Silurian rocks. In the IAZ, thinner (~1-4 km), closely-spaced thrust sheets exhume Devonian and Silurian rocks, and a regional-scale anticlinorium in the easternmost EC exhumes rocks as deep as Cambrian and Ordovician. 11 new apatite and 5 new zircon (U-Th)/He cooling ages provide timing constraints on the initiation of thrust-related exhumation. Zircon cooling ages (32.8±1.4 to 25.4±1.2 Ma) reveal initiation of exhumation in the easternmost EC as early as ~32 Ma, and an exhumed partial retention zone at the EC-IAZ boundary. Apatite ages in the IAZ range from 21.71±0.77 to 7.45±0.20 Ma, and consistently young to the east. Exhumation was previously thought to have begun in the IAZ at ~10 Ma, but our results show thrust-related exhumation as early as ~22 Ma, in agreement with published AFT data that show that deformation had propagated eastward into the IAZ by at least ~18 Ma. In the western SAZ, apatite cooling ages of 6.10±0.17 and 4.84±0.14 Ma demonstrate that thrust-related uplift and exhumation in the western SAZ had begun by at least the late Miocene. These new data show a consistent eastward propagation of thrust-related uplift and exhumation from the eastern EC to the western SAZ between ~32 and ~5 Ma. Integration of these data with sequential restoration of a balanced cross-section will provide a temporal record of shortening rates, which will allow testing of predicted feedback responses of the Andean thrust belt to middle Miocene uplift of the southern Altiplano.