Estratigrafia e tectônica da Faixa Paraguai Norte: implicações evolutivas neoproterozóicas no Sudeste do Cráton Amazônico

Abstract

The Northern Paraguay Belt, located at Southeast of Amazonian Craton, was established during the final stages of Brasiliano Cycle (940-620 My.) marked by the collisions among Amazonian, San Francisco and Rio de La Plata cratons to assembly the Gondwana West Supercontinent. The Northern Paraguay Belt consists mainly of metasedimentary rocks of the Cuiabá Group (720 My.), assigned to passive margins basins in an extensional context during the break-up of Supercontinent Rodinia (1.0 Gy.). These basins were affected by tectonic inversion by Brasiliano Orogeny, causing regional metamorphism and ductile crustal level deformation. Subsequently, the orogen had been uplifted, exposed to erosion and subjected to extensional episodes, developing intracratonic basin where sedimentary rocks of the Puga Formation (635 My.), Araras Group (627 ± 32 My.), Raizama Formation (645 ± 15 My.) and Diamantino Formation (541 ± 7 Ma.) were unconformably deposited in moderately deep to shallow storm influenced plataformal environment, tidal affected transitional environment and, lacustrine deltaic environment, respectively. These rocks are classically assigned to a Foreland Basin, however, ancient suture zones usually exposes the orogen roots, and these basins are currently not well preserved. These intracratonic or plataformal basin sedimentary rocks show considerable thicknesses and outcrop in Northeast-Southwest aligned trending mountain ranges. The São Vicente Granite (518 My.) and the Tapirapuã Formation basalts (197 My.) occur as intrusive rocks in the studied area along the Northern Paraguay Belt. The geological contacts between the metasedimentary rocks of the Cuiabá Group with sedimentary rocks of Puga Formation, Araras Group and Alto Paraguay Group, is interpreted as non-conformity. The Cuiabá Group rocks (720 My.) are mainly composed by quartz, plagioclase, muscovite, biotite and phengite and correspondent to greenschist facies affecting a low grade pelitic protolith. These rocks were deformed by ductile shear zone trending Northeast-Southwest, with strain partitioning, described as Transpressional Structural Domain D1, which was divided into two deformation facies: (1) D1-A and (2) D1-B. (1) The D1-A features a fine continuous foliation and stretching mineral lineation, with a rake of 40º, moderately inclined to recumbent, “S” type asymmetrical flexural folds; ductile-brittle thrustfaults and late strike-slip dextral ductile-brittle shear bands; (2) The D1-B is marked by a mylonitic foliation, with its stretching mineral lineation, with a 15º rake. These deformational facies comprises a mainly transpressional sinistral flow mostly dominated by simple shear and influenced by the strain partitioning. All structures indicate tectonic vergence from Northwest toward Southeast, as a result of the collisional setting of the Brasiliano Orogeny (620 Ma.). The sedimentary rocks were deformed under brittle crustal level conditions. Consequently they show inclined to subvertical, asymmetric "Z" type drag folds indicating dextral movement, besides normal faults and cataclastic foliation. The drag folds in the sedimentary rocks indicate tectonic vergence toward both Southeast and Southwest, therefore they were not generated under directed tectonic effort. Normal faults which deform sedimentary rocks are related to later transtensional reactivation episodes of ancient structures forming drag folds and Post-Paleozoic grabens affecting both the Parecis and Parana sedimentary basins. Late quartz veins occur emplaced only in the Cuiabá Group rocks. In conclusion, the Northern Paraguay Belt rocks were affected for at least two main tectonic episodes: (1) The Brasiliano Orogeny, only represented by Cuiabá Group rocks which show metamorphism and ductile deformation; (2) and transtensional reactivation that had been responsible for the establishment of the sedimentary basins followed by brittle deformation of Puga Formation, Araras Group, Raizama and Diamantino Formation.