The Colombian geochronological database (CGD)

ABSTRACT

Geochronological databases are powerful tools for characterizing the crustal evolution and the age spectra of a region and allow comparison with other areas at a regional scale. In this contribution, we present the Colombian Geochronological Database (CGD), which contains a curated compilation of ca. 67,406 individual published U-Th-Pb, K-Ar, Ar-Ar, Rb-Sr, Sm-Nd, Lu-Hf, Fission-track, U-Th-He, and Re-Os mineral and whole rock ages that are reported in the published literature. Each date includes geographic coordinates, geological setting, petrologic and chemical information extracted from the respective publications. The structure of the database provides a powerful interface for constructing queries and allows searching and extracting information on geographic domains, provinces, stratigraphic units, isotopic systems, date interpretations, references, etc. This information establishes a framework for regional and global geological interpretations with geochronological, stratigraphic, structural and palaeogeographic implications.

With the present effort we present to the geoscience community a clear insight, from a regional perspective, to the geology and tectonics of Colombia since Precambrian times. The comparison of all (detrital and magmatic) single zircon U-Pb dates from the Colombian (Gondwana sourced) geochronological database with the Global and North American (Laurentia sourced) databases provides a temporal constraint on the evolution of the South American continent. U-Pb zircon ages in Colombia define 13 peak clusters centred at 1767, 1530, 1325, 1178, 1007, 605,540, 468, 271, 237, 182, 76 and 10 Ma but of those, only few have a good correlation in all three databases: 1007 (Grenvillian/Orinoquian/Putumayo Orogeny), 605 (Braziliano/Pan-African Orogeny), 468 (Famatinian/Taconic Orogeny), and 182 Ma (Break-up of Pangea) zircon peaks. This correlation suggests that some tectonic events in Colombia are global and might represent crustal production and preservation while the other peaks might just represent local arc magmatic events.

KEYWORDS:

• South america
• colombia
• geochronology
• database
• kde

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here

Acknowledgments

We thank Los Andes University and especially the Faculty of Science and the Department of Geoscience for their support during the Semillero stage as well as other students who helped in our initial compilation stage (Daniel Guarin, Daniel Reyes, Daniela Gallo, Luisa Acosta, Luisa Rengifo, Sebastian Duran, Sergio Silva, Nicolas Palacios, Maria Jose Delgado, Luis Fernando Posada and Tatiana Aldana). We thank the two reviewers (Mauricio Ibáñez-Mejía and one anonymous) for their insightful comments who helped to increase the quality and clarity of the manuscript. YR-A acknowledged support through the DFG-grant RO4174/3-3.

Disclosure statement

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

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.