Middle Cretaceous to Recent North America-Caribbean plate boundary history: Mexico to the Virgin Islands via Guatemala, Cuba and Jamaica

Abstract

Stratigraphy, structure, subsidence history, sedimentary facies, timing of metamorphism, detrital zircon chronology (maximum depositional age and provenance), and thermochonology (e.g., apatite fission track) demonstrates that North America-Caribbean plate interactions first began in the middle Cretaceous in the Chortis Block (Flores, 2009), the Maastrichtian in Chiapas (Mexico) and northern Guatemala (Pindell and Dewey, 1982; Martens et al., 2007; Harlow et al., 2004; Ratschbacher et al., 2009; Rosenfeld, 1993; Pindell et al., 2012), the Paleocene in Belize, the Middle Eocene in Cuba and northern Dominican Republic (Iturralde-Vinent, et al. 2008; Pindell and Draper, 1991; Krebs et al., 2008; Jolly et al., 2008), and since the Miocene in the area of the easternmost Bahamas and the Puerto Rico Trench (e.g., Laurencin et al., 2018). Tectonic and depositional conditions along the North American side of the plate boundary were entirely passive prior to the noted times of initial plate boundary interaction in each. The depositional timing of the first arc-derived detrital zircons in the North American forelands of these zones of plate interaction also supports the eastward younging of initial plate interactions. The synthesis leads to the inescapable conclusion that the Caribbean arc system (Great Caribbean Arc) originated and migrated from the Pacific to its present position through time at about 20 mm/yr, just fast enough to have been recorded by progressive arc development in the migrating arc Pindell, 1985; Pindell et al. 1988; Pindell and Barrett, 1990). An important point concerning this evolving margin is that sinistral shear must have begun along the paleo-Motagua fault zone in the Maastrichtian, immediately after arc-continent collision there (Pindell et al. 2012), because the arc and Caribbean Plate continued to migrate toward the Bahamas culminating in Middle Eocene collision there. This paleo-Motagua shear zone was almost certainly a high angle transform zone, and thus much of the southern part of the continental passive margin of Yucat·n, which had been overthrust by the arc in the Great Arc-southern Yucat·n collision at a typically lower angle, remained beneath the arc. Here is where it is highly instructive to understand that the Caribbean Plate is fixed in the regional mantle reference frame, and that North American (and South American) motion over the mantle is responsible for Caribbean-American relative motion (Pindell and Dewey, 1982; M¸ller et al. 1999, Pindell and Kennan 2009). Thus, much of the overthrust, thinned crustal portion and sedimentary wedge of the original southern Yucat·n margin, although largely metamorphosed, likely remains subcreted to the base of the obducted arc basement of the upper Nicaraguan Rise, Jamaica, and parts of the Cayman Ridge. In addition, the Central Cuban segment of the Great Arc is underpinned by various metamorphosed passive margin deposits collectively referred to as “Caribeana”, distinct from the Bahamas section, and metamorphosed and subcreted to the arc belt of Central Cuba at the end of the Cretaceous, probably in close association with the arc-southern Yucat·n collision (Garcia-Casco et al., 2008). The Central Cuban “composite arc” terrane (comprising both arc and subcreted meta-sediments) was rifted from the Cayman Ridge in the Paleocene to form the Yucat·n [intra-arc] Basin (Pindell et al. 2005), such that more of Caribeana, and possibly even continental crustal slices, may underlie the Cayman Ridge. Hence, some of the oils known from Nicaragua Rise and Jamaica today (CGG Geoconsulting, online 22 Feb 2018) may have been sourced from this overthrust Mesozoic section, prior to upward migration into and through the overthrust (allochthonous) arc. In the Middle Eocene, as the arc completed its collision with and became accreted to the Bahamas Platform (i.e., became part of North America), relative motion between North America and the Caribbean lithosphere had to be taken up elsewhere, and thus the plate boundary shifted from the Cuba-northern Hispaniola/Bahamas subduction/collision zone to the Cayman Trough strike slip system (Rosencrantz et al., 1988; Leroy et al., 2000). The Cayman Trough was initiated more or less at the transition between the rear flank of the Great Arc and the Caribbean oceanic plateau plate interior (Pindell and Kennan, 2009). Two primary zones of plateau crust that were once situated along the southern Cayman Ridge now form the en-echelon, elongate accreted belts of the Sierra de Neiba and the southern Peninsula of central and southern Hispaniola (Pindell and Barrett, 1990). This amalgamation was a function of the early part (Eocene-Oligocene) of the 1100 km of total displacement recorded by the Cayman Trough. Most of the latter part of that total (Miocene-Recent) has produced the 400 km E-W separation between southern Cuba and northern Hispaniola, after a northward jump in the position of the eastern Cayman transform (Pindell and Barrett, 1990; Erikson et al., 1990; Pindell and Draper, 1991). In addition, the Cayman Trough’s offset history has shifted Central America some 1100 km westward from its Eocene position adjacent to northern Jamaica, as supported now by the occurrence of recently-determined Grenville and Permo-Triassic aged detrital zircons in Jamaica’s Richmond Formation (J. Pindell and S. Mitchell, unpublished data, 2018).

AAPG Datapages/Search and Discovery Article #90330©2018 AAPG Hedberg: Geology of Middle America – the Gulf of Mexico, Yucatan, Caribbean, Grenada and Tobago Basins and Their Margins “Integration of the geology of the area from the southern onshore of North America to the northern onshore of South America”, Siguenza, Guadalajara, Spain, July 2-5, 2018