Three related sedimentary successions located in Arizona, Utah, and California were deposited in basins on proto-North America during the early rifting of Rodinia (~780 Mya). Previous detrital zircon U-Pb maximum ages for the units are inexact, making it difficult to piece together what happened at this point in Earth history. We report better maximum age constraints on these units obtained by subjecting detrital zircons to high-precision CA-ID-TIMS analysis, which provide more exact 206 Pb/238U ages. These new data significantly improve the precision for the base of the ChUMP units, with an average age of 775. 63 ± 0.27 Ma acquired for the bottom of the Chuar Group, where earlier work put the age at 782 Ma. An average age of 775.44 ± 0.73 Ma for the bottom of the Pahrump Group is also younger than the previously reported 787 ± 11 Ma. Zircons of the Uinta Mountain Group provided ages of about 766.88 ± 2.31 Ma, which is on par with an earlier age of 766.4 ± 4.8 Ma. These high precision ages for the young detrital zircons in the ChUMP units improve links between the units and provide better context for geochemical, isotopic, and biological events that occurred during the initial rifting of Rodinia.

The transition from the end of the Ordovician to the beginning of the Silurian Period is characterized by the glaciation of the Gondwana paleocontinent, eustatic sea level change, a perturbation to the global carbon cycle and one of the ve major mass extinctions of the Phanerozoic Eon. Due to signi cant sea level fall, the Ordovician-Silurian (O-S) boundary is often marked by hiatus and exposure in the shallow marine geologic record (e.g., Copper et al. [2013]). Two locations that host stratigraphic succession close to the boudary are Anticosti Basin of Quebec (Canada, e.g., Desrochers et al. [2010]), and the carbonate mounds of the Siljan ring district (Dalarna County, Sweden, e.g., Ebbestad et al. [2015]). The exact timing and dynamics of the glaciation and mass extinction are yet to be understood. Similarly, the interplay between those events and the carbon cycle perturbation are still unclear. As a result, there is a serious need for radiometric age constraints in this crucial part of the Paleozoic Era. The acquisition of more radiometric dates, achieved in this study, aims to address the present dearth of absolute dates close to the boundary. The dates produced in this study represent the first modern geochronologic constraints on the O-S boundary, leveraging the development of the EARTHTIME initiative and the latest U-Pb dating techniques that have improved accuracy and allowed for dating of single zircon crystals at <=0.1% precision level. Here I present two new U-Pb zircon ages obtained via bentonite dating. The first bentonite, 443.61+-0.52 Ma (2, including analytical, tracer calibration and decay constant uncertainties) was collected from the base of the Lousy Cove Member, Ellis Bay Formation (Anticosti Island, Quebec, Canada). The second one, 443.28+-0.50 Ma (including analytical, tracer calibration and decay constant uncertainties) comes from a karstic void within the Boda Core Facies of the Boda Formation (Dalarna County, Sweden). U-Pb geochronology (chemical abrasion, isotope dilution, thermal ionization mass spectrometry: CA-ID-TIMS) on single zircons was used to obtain these ages. These results are the closest radiometric ages to the current O-S boundary (compared to any time constraints in the 2012 Geologic Time Scale) and allow to signifcantly reduce the uncertainty of the current age boundary (443.8+-1.5, Cohen et al. [2018]). Furthermore these absolute ages have been used to make models that explore drivers of Earth system change, such as an end-Ordovician global carbon cycle perturbation. / Graduate / 2022-07-07