Morphology of Detrital Zircon and Its Application in Provenance Analysis:Example from Cretaceous Continental Scientific Drilling Borehole in Songliao Basin
Song Ying
Qian Zhenyu
Zhang Junxia
Stepashko Andrei
Abstract：The geological thermochronology of detrital zircon in sediments is one of the most robust methods for the provenance analysis by providing accurate age constraint and tectonic setting of source terranes.However,the detrital zircon grains are often derived from more than one source terrane and have undergone a rather complicated terrestrial transportation processes from source to sink.The re-construction of the surface dynamic processes from the source area to the catchment basin is critical to convincing geological interpreta-tion of the detrital zircon U-Pb age patterns.This paper presents a new approach for the quantitative classification of detrital zircon mor-phologies,by quantifing various morphological parameters,including the mother rock of detrital zircon,the degree of crystal round-ness,the way of crystal fracture,the degree of crystal fissure and the collision marks upon the crystal surfaces.In order to illustrate all the morphological parameters and make a reliable geological interpretation,we designed a new kind and teaching-friendly density plot, the multidimensional spider density plot,which could reveal the overall trend of one detrital zircon sample during the whole surface transportation process.Finally,detrital zircon samples,which were collected from the Cretaceous Continental Scientific Drilling bore-hole (CCSD-SK-1)in the Songliao basin,were analyzed to detect the provenance variation.The practical application proves that the morphological classification proposed in this paper is valid and reliable for provenance study.
Keywords：detrital zirconmorphologyprovenance analysismultidimensional density spider plotSongliao basinpetroleum geologySource-Sink system
Publication Date：2018-01-01
Online Publishing Date：2025-08-15(First online date of this platform, not the publication date of the document)
Pages：10( 1997-2006 )