A review on large igneous provinces (LIPs) and their implications for paleogeographic reconstruction and continental breakup
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    Abstract:

    Large igneous provinces (LIPs) represent extreme geological events in Earth’s history and are usually related to deep processes such as mantle plumes. They are composed of large volumes of intraplate mafic magmatic rocks (sills, dykes or flood lavas) formed during relatively short duration and are of great significances for studying global atmosphere—ocean climate change and mass extinction, large- scale metallogeny as well as paleogeographic reconstruction and continental breakup. The dispersal history of Pangea supercontinent from ~200 Ma shows that although not all LIPs were related to continental breakup, almost every major breakup event was accompanied by LIP. Therefore, LIPs can be used as an important tool for studying the paleogeographic reconstruction and continental breakup of pre- Pangea supercontinents, especially for the Precambrian supercontinents that lack other reliable evidence such as paleontology, glacial deposits and abundant paleomagnetic results. From last 20 years, more and more LIPs have been identified from different cratons, and comparisons of these LIPs have provided important constraints on paleogeographic reconstruction and breakup history of the Precambrian supercontinents. Due to multiple stages of continental breakup, erosion or covered by young basins, the Precambrian LIPs usually occur as LIP fragments/remnants as represented by intraplate mafic events consisting of mafic dykes, sills or occasionally mafic lavas. Geochronogical, petrological and geochemical comparisons of LIP fragments/remnants in different cratons combined with other evidence can be used to recover the original temporal and spatial distributions of LIPs across different cratons, and can therefore provide important constraints on paleo- positions of these cratons in the Precambrian supercontinents. Similar to other tools for Precambrian paleogeographic reconstruction, there are some restrictions or uncertainness in using LIPs as tools for paleogeographic reconstruction and continental breakup. Therefore, when using LIPs as robust tools for Precambrian paleogeographic reconstruction and continental breakup, other evidence such as paleomagnetic data, geometry of mafic dykes, similarities between special geological events (glacial deposits, black shales, tuff layers, fossils, disconformity or unconformity, etc. ) recorded in pre- LIPs strata, comparisons of mafic magmatic sequences and large deformation belts and lithosphere structures revealed by geophysical methods should also be considered as possible.

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ZHANG Shuanhong, ZHAO Yue, PEI Junling, WANG Hongyu, HU Guohui, ZHANG Qiqi, CAI Yuhang, KONG Linghao, WANG Sen, WANG Kai.2022. A review on large igneous provinces (LIPs) and their implications for paleogeographic reconstruction and continental breakup[J]. Geological Review,68(5):1634-1652.

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History
  • Received:June 07,2022
  • Revised:July 03,2022
  • Adopted:
  • Online: September 19,2022
  • Published: September 15,2022