The Central Metasedimentary Belt (Grenville Province) as a failed back-arc rift zone: Nd isotope evidence

Nd isotope data are presented for granitoid orthogneisses from the Central Metasedimentary Belt (CMB) of the Grenville Province in order to map the extent of juvenile Grenvillian-age crust within this orogenic belt that is composed mostly of older crustal terranes. The data reveal a 150 km-wide belt of juvenile crust in Ontario, but this belt contains a block of pre-Grenvillian crust (containing the Elzevir pluton) which yields an estimated crustal formation age of 1.5 Ga. The recognition of an older block within the CMB has profound implications for its structure and tectonic evolution, because it implies that juvenile Grenvillian crust, apparently forming a wide NE–SW belt, is in fact distributed in two narrower segments with approximately N–S strike. We suggest that the CMB comprises an en echelon series of ensimatic rift segments, created by back-arc spreading behind a continental margin arc. These rift segments extend southwards (in the subsurface) into the northeastern Unites States. The rift segments contain abundant marble outcrops, consistent with marine incursion into the rift zone, and these deposits also continue northwards into a ‘Marble domain’ of the CMB in Quebec. However, crustal formation ages in the latter domain are largely pre-Grenvillian, implying that the Quebec rift segment was ensialic. Hence, we interpret the CMB in Ontario and Quebec as the northern termination of a failed back-arc rift zone.