@inbook{829fe9d20102406aacdf679f73886f30,
title = "Detrital zircon sources in the Ordovician metasedimentary rocks of the Moroccan Meseta: Inferences for northern Gondwanan passive-margin paleogeography",
abstract = "Detrital zircon U-Pb geochronology has been widely used to constrain the preCarboniferous geography of the European and, to a lesser extent, the Moroccan Variscides. The latter have been generally considered as part of a long-lasting passive margin that characterized northern Gondwana from Ordovician to Devonian time, and was subsequently involved in the late Paleozoic Variscan orogeny. We report detrital zircon ages for three Early to Late Ordovician samples from the Beni Mellala inlier in the northeastern part of the Western Moroccan Meseta in order to discuss the temporal evolution of the sources of sediments in this region. The detrital zircon spectra of these samples, characterized by two main populations with mean ages of 630-610 Ma and 2170-2060 Ma, are typical of Cambrian-Devonian rocks from the Moroccan Variscides and confirm their link to the West African craton. A minor Stenian-Tonian population (peak at ca. 970 Ma) suggests the influence of a distant and intermittent NE African source (Sahara metacraton), which was probably interrupted after Ordovician time. Our data support previous interpretations of the Moroccan Meseta (and the entire northern Moroccan Variscides) as part of the northern Gondwana passive margin. The main sources of these sediments would have been the West African craton in the western regions of the passive margin (Moroccan Meseta and central European Paleozoic massifs), and the Arabian-Nubian Shield and/or Sahara metacraton in the eastern areas (Libya, Egypt, Jordan, central and NW Iberian zones during Paleozoic time), where the 1.0 Ga detrital zircon population is persistent throughout the Ordovician-Devonian time span.",
author = "Cristina Accotto and {Mart{\'i}nez Poyatos}, David and Antonio Azor and Cristina Talavera and Evans, {Noreen Joyce} and Antonio Jabaloy-s{\'a}nchez and {El Hadi}, Hassan and Abdelfatah Tahiri",
note = "Funding Information: This work was funded by the Ministerio de Econom{\'i}a y Com-petividad (MINECO) of Spain through project PANGEATOR (CGL2015-71692-P) and the predoctoral scholarship BES-2016-078168. We are indebted to Elain Millar, Mike Hall, and Brad McDonald for their assistance in the John de Laeter Centre (JdLC), technical support for sample preparation, and assistance with the laser ablation–inductively coupled plasma–mass spectrometer (LA-ICP-MS), respectively. The cathodoluminescence imaging was carried out at Curtin University{\textquoteright}s Microscopy & Microanalysis Facility, for which instrumentation has been partially funded by the university, and state and commonwealth governments, and the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) Facility at the University of Edinburgh (UK). Laboratory analyses on the detrital zircon grains were carried out on the JdLC SHRIMP II, supported by the Australian Research Council. Research in the JdLC GeoHistory Facility is enabled by AuScope (auscope.org.au) and the Australian government via the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS). The SIMS analyses were performed at the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Ion Microprobe Facility of the University of Edinburgh (UK). We want to express our gratitude to Faouziya Haissen (Hassan II University of Casablanca, Morocco) and Douglas N. Reusch (University of Maine) as peer reviewers, and Yvette Kuiper (Colorado School of Mines) as volume editor, for their constructive comments and suggestions that helped to improve the quality of the original manuscript. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2022 The Geological Society of America.",
year = "2022",
month = may,
day = "19",
doi = "10.1130/2021.2554(17)",
language = "English",
isbn = "9780813725543",
pages = "419--436",
editor = "Kuiper, {Yvette D.} and Murphy, {J. Brendan} and Nance, {R. Damian} and Strachan, {Robin A.} and Thompson, {Margaret D.}",
booktitle = "New Developments in the Appalachian-Caledonian- Variscan Orogen",
publisher = "Geological Society of America",
address = "United States",
}