Himalayan detrital chromian spinels and timing of Indus-Yarlung ophiolite erosion

The geochemistry of detrital chromian spinels is commonly used to discriminate provenance from different tectonic settings of mafic and ultramafic igneous rocks. Detrital spinels in Cenozoic foreland-basin successions fed from the Himalaya Orogen were assertively interpreted as sourced from the ophiolitic rocks of the Indus-Yarlung suture zone. This study compares the geochemistry of detrital Cr-spinels from the Tethys Himalaya passive margin and Cretaceous Xigaze forearc successions with those from the Indus-Yarlung ophiolites. Cr-spinels in the Indus-Yarlung ophiolites have low TiO2 (mostly <0.2%) and high Al2O3 (10-48%). Detrital Cr-spinels from the Tethyan Himalaya have instead high TiO2 (mostly >0.2%) and low Al2O3 (mainly 6-23%), indicating a rift-related basaltic origin. Detrital Cr-spinels from the Xigaze forearc basin have either low TiO2 (mostly <0.2%) and low Al2O3 (4-34%), suggesting provenance from a supra-subduction-zone peridotite, or high TiO2 (>1.0%), indicating intra-plate basaltic origin. Compositional fingerprints of detrital Cr-spinels from Lower Eocene foreland-basin strata in the central-eastern Himalaya indicate provenance from the Lhasa Block without input from the Indus-Yarlung ophiolites. Only Cr-spinels from the Lower Eocene foreland-basin strata in the north-western Himalaya and the Upper Eocene-Lower Miocene remnant-ocean turbidites of the Bengal basin are mostly ophiolite-derived. The Indus-Yarlung ophiolites were thus emplaced and exposed to erosion since the Early Eocene (>50Ma) in the NW Himalaya, but only subsequently (50-38Ma) in the eastern Himalaya. © 2014 Elsevier B.V.