Sidney R. Hemming1, S. Brachfeld2, George Gehrels3, S. L. Goldstein1, and T. Van de Flierdt1. (1) Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, Palisades, NY 10964, (2) Department of Earth and Environmental Studies, Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ 07043, (3) Department of Geosciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721
We report 40Ar/39Ar analyses of individual hornblende grains and laser ablation U-Pb analyses of individual zircon grains from East Antarctic glacial diamict samples from the Prydz Bay region. Hornblende ages are strongly concentrated near 500 Ma and thus record a regional pan-African metamorphic overprint. Zircon U-Pb ages have a prominent ca. 550 Ma peak, also consistent with a large pan-African regional event, but additionally have an important peak in the interval between 880 and 950 Ma. In detail the cores capture sediment from different glacial flow lines based on published balance velocities, and there are some differences in the zircon U-Pb age distributions that are interpreted to reflect source variations along these different flow lines. There may also be some differences among different diamict layers from the same cores, but more work would be required to demonstrate whether this is significant.
[Manuscript]