LATE PALEOZOIC TECTONIC FRAMEWORK OF THE SOUTH-CENTRAL REGION AND EVOLUTION OF THE PERMIAN BASIN

New detrital zircon U-Pb geochronologic, heavy mineral analyses, and thin section petrographic results from twenty samples spanning the pre-Cambrian to Cretaceous collected in the Marathon uplift and Guadalupe mountain areas to define the sediment source evolution of the Delaware Basin. Previous studies have suggested competing sources and west-, north-, and south-directed Late Paleozoic sediment transport pathways. The Delaware Basin, a sub-basin of the greater Permian Basin, and represents a long-lived depocenter spanning early Paleozoic passive margin deposition, and Late Paleozoic foreland basin sediment accumulation during the collision of Gondwana and Laurentian. Potential sediment sources include the Marathon-Ouachita thin-skinned fold-thrust belt, peri-Gondwanan terranes, Appalachian provinces, and Ancestral Rocky Mountain uplifts. We rely on diagnostic zircon U-Pb ages of the late Paleozoic (1600-1825ma) from the Yavapai–Mazatzal terrane and related Central Plains orogeny, Neoproterzoic to early Paleozoic (515-790ma) from the Peri Gondwana terrane, within the Laurentian – Gondwanan suture, and Mesoproterzoic (920-1300ma) from the Grenville Orogen of parts of North America and Mexico. We will compare our U-Pb geochronologic results with coeval strata and existing data. Our results inform the protracted sediment routing pathways in southern Gondwana, have implications for Paleozoic tectonics of North America, and addressing temporal changes in diagenesis, reservoir properties, and geomechanics that may be related to initial lithologic composition.