CANO, Néstor; MOLANO, Juan Carlos    SEPULVEDA, Janeth. Petrogenetic constraints of the La Quinta Formation igneous rocks, Serranía del Perijá, northern Colombian Andes. []. , 26, 2, pp.139-155.   20--2023. ISSN 1794-6190.  https://doi.org/10.15446/esrj.v26n2.95993.

The La Quinta Formation is a Triassic-Jurassic volcano-sedimentary unit exposed in Colombia and Venezuela, that crops out along both flanks of the Serranía del Perijá and in western Mérida Andes. It is composed of reddish mudsto-nes and sandstones interbedded with basaltic-to-rhyolitic lava flows and ignimbrites. This succession is locally intruded by dacitic-rhyolitic hypabyssal bodies, felsic dikes and small monzodioritic intrusions. The volcanism recorded in La Quinta comprises the whole subalkaline compositional spectrum from basaltic andesites-alkali basalts (plagioclase-au-gite), though andesites-trachyandesites-dacites (plagioclase-augite-ß quartz-amphibole) and rhyolites-alkali rhyolites (ß quartz-sanidine-plagioclase-biotite). Magnetite, ilmenite, hematite, zircon and apatite are recurrent accessory phases and suggest dominant oxidized conditions (+1.2 Ni-NiO to hematite-magnetite buffers) in the magmas. Clinopyroxene and ilmenite-magnetite geothermobarometry suggest an early crystallization of the former (ca. 1120 °C and 4.6 kbar) in the middle portion of a normal-to-thickened continental crust (26-49 km), and later fractionation of the Fe oxides (ca. 720 °C). In addition, some samples exhibit calc-silicate alteration formed of hydrated grossular-andradite, epidote and zeolites in association with possible sediment-hosted stratiform copper occurrences. According to mineralogical and geochemical evidence, these rocks belong to a single comagmatic suite in which differentiation processes were driven by low-pressure fractional crystallization and middle-crustal assimilation. Moreover, these rocks exhibit geochemical features indicative of low degrees of partial melting of a spinel lherzolite (or an enriched source) in a hybrid setting between subduction-related arc and intracontinental rifting. Thus, we propose a mixed tectonic scenario in which subduction of the Farallon plate beneath western South America combined with transtensional tectonics resulting from the break-up of Pangea, generated volcanic activity with an inherited arc-signature behind (landward) the arc axis.

: Triassic-Jurassic igneous rocks; hybrid arc-rift magmatismi; break-up of Pangea; petrogenesis; stratiform Cu deposits.

        · |     · |     · ( pdf )