Hybridization between I-type and S-type granites in the ordovician famatinian magmatic arc, Tafí del Valle, Tucumán, NW Argentina

Abstract

In the Tafí del Valle region, in northwestern Argentina, several intrusive bodies of lower Paleozoic age were emplaced in the metasedimentary Puncoviscana Formation, belonging to the Sierras Pampeanas. Four intrusive bodies outcrop in the study area: La Ovejería, El Infiernillo, Loma Pelada and Los Cuartos. La Ovejería and El Infiernillo intrusive bodies represent the I-type magmatism according to their major element contents and show cotectic evolutions similar to those described by Famatinian I-type batholiths. These moderately peraluminous adakitic trondhjemites have characteristic high Sr/Y ratios and low Fe₂O₃+MgO+MnO+TiO₂ contents. They are related to high-pressure conditions at the source, where dehydration melting of basaltic rocks may be involved and garnet is retained in the residue leading to generation of HREE depleted melts. The Loma Pelada granites show characteristics of S-type magmatism (low CaO and MgO, and high SiO₂ and K₂O contents) typical of granites segregated in the last stages of magmatic differentiation, or anatectic granites. They show an increasing peraluminosity due to garnet entrainment and they are related to the anatectic melts generated in the Puncoviscana Formation. Both the Loma Pelada and Los Cuartos granitoids include samples with intermediate geochemical characteristics that range between those of the El Infiernillo and La Ovejería and the regional metasedimentary rocks. These characteristics could be explained by assimilation processes involving the I-type intrusive magmas and the metasedimentary host rocks or by hybridization processes between trondhjemitic I-type magmas as La Ovejería and El Infiernillo and anatectic S-type melts.