ABSTRACT
In southern Egypt, Neoproterozoic granitoids intrude the crust from Libya in the west to the Nile River in the east. Best exposed at Gebel Uweinat, Gebel Kamil, Bir Safsaf, Gebel El Asr and Gebel Umm Shaghir, these rocks represent the transition between the rejuvenated Archean to Paleoproterozoic crust of the east Saharan craton and the juvenile Neoproterozoic crust of the Arabian–Nubian Shield to the east. We present U-Pb zircon geochronology and whole rock geochemistry from 16 Neoproterozoic (c. 628–580 Ma) granitoids across southern Egypt which document the synchronous production of diverse compositions indicative of an intraplate or intracontinental tectonic setting. Our data better constrain the age relationships, petrogenesis, and Pan-African crustal growth associated with the amalgamation of Gondwana and contribute to understanding the crust-modifying processes that led to the development of the Saharan metacraton in the Ediacaran.
Acknowledgments
We gratefully acknowledge financial support from National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number 41430210) and the Swedish Research Council (grant to V. Pease). The PetroTectonics Analytical Facility is funded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation and Department of Geological Sciences, Stockholm University. This is a Nordsim publication (no. 594). The Nordsim facility was jointly funded by the Nordic countries at the time of this study. Helpful and constructive reviews by Jean-Paul Liégeois and an anonymous reviewer led to improvements in the final manuscript.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Supplementary Material
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