Sedimentological and geochemical characteristics of Lower Jurassic Sandstones from Gümüşhane, NE Turkey: implications for source to sink processes, paleoenvironmental conditions, provenance and tectonic settings

ABSTRACT

The eastern Sakarya Zone (SZ), one of the Alpine Himalayan Belt’s main components, has complex Mesozoic–Cenozoic geodynamic evolution, which remains controversial. Early-Middle Jurassic volcano-sedimentary successions (Şenköy Formation) extensively outcrops in Gümüşhane region, NE Turkey. It is regarded as a critical unit to understand the Mesozoic tectonic evolution of the eastern Sakarya Zone. One of the Şenköy Formation’s predominant units is sandstone succession, preserving implications for paleoenvironmental conditions and tectono-sedimentary development of Neotethys Ocean. Thus, a combined analysis of comprehensive petrography, whole-rock major, trace and rare earth element data is carried out on the sandstones, which are well constrained as late Sinemurian- Pliensbachian. The sandstones are mainly arkosic to lithic arenites in lithology showing poor textural maturities. They are mostly represented by relatively high ICV, low CIA, high K₂O/Al₂O₃, Fe₂O₃+ MgO, TiO₂, Th/U, pronounced negative Eu anomaly, enriched LREEs, elevated Gd_N/Yb_N, low Ce/Ce*, Ni/Co, La/V and Zr/Ti. The petrographic and geochemical characteristics imply that the sediments may have experienced relatively low chemical weathering processes and slight reworking and recycling processes with a short transport distance before deposition in the basin. Early Jurassic sandstone successions were interpreted as a transgressive series, showing a predominantly open sea environment with oxidizing paleoenvironmental conditions. The sandstone samples’ paleoenvironment is likely to be located along the southern margin of the arc and the Neotethyan basin to the south. The extensional and trans-extensional tectonic regime might have played an essential role in controlling the basin’s isolated-half graben and/or asymmetric geometry, leading to changes in the provenance of studied sandstone samples. Thus, the geochemical signature differences are probably associated with basement-related proximal origins and minor effects of the multi-phases petrogenesis that experienced different source to sink processes. Early Jurassic sandstones were probably derived from multi-genetic source rocks, including (i) granite and (ii) metamorphic rocks. Our new data has also indicated that other source rocks can include mafic to felsic volcanic succession. The possible provenance for granitic pluton and metamorphic rocks can be provided by the Hercynian heterogenetic crystalline basement widespread throughout the SZ. However, mafic to felsic volcanic rock source is likely to be associated with the pre-Early Jurassic nearby volcanic-arc, which is rarely recorded in the eastern SZ. The source rock signatures may imply a close genetic link with ancient magmatic-arc generation due to the southward subduction of Palaeotethys.

Graphical abstract

KEYWORDS:

• Sandstones
• geochemistry
• provenance
• tectonic settings
• early jurassic
• sakarya zone

Acknowledgments

We thank Robert J. Stern, Editor-in-Chief, for his editorial handling and constructive comments. We are grateful to Fırat Şengün, Hossein Azizi, and Gültekin Topuz for their critical reviews and suggestions, which improved the quality of the manuscript. The authors would like to thank Abdurrahman Dokuz for his constructive comments. We are also grateful to Seda Altuntaş for improving the English of the text.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

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