Jacqueline Giblin & Melissa Luna (2016 GSC Grant Awardees)
Faculty Sponsor: Michael Wizevich
GSC Newsletter Article Project Summary
Faculty Sponsor: Michael Wizevich
GSC Newsletter Article Project Summary
The purpose of this project was to utilize uranium-lead (U-Pb) dating of detrital zircon grains to determine the provenance of the sediment infill of the Mesozoic Hartford and Pomperaug basins. The source areas for much of the sedimentary fill of the Hartford and Pomperaug rift basins is not well constrained due to discontinuous outcrop, complex paleocurrent patterns and complicated tectonic history of the source areas. Scientists have proposed sources from the east, west, and both the east and west; there is little agreement on a definitive source or sources of material in the basin. Zircon is a durable mineral found in nearly all sedimentary rocks and can be dated by Laser Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer (LA-ICPMS) analysis of U-Pb in the detrital zircon grains. The age of a detrital zircon provides the date of the source rock in which it formed. Dates of zircons and potential source rocks can be matched and thus provide the areas that they came from.
 Figure 1: Map of Hartford and Pomperaug basins contain sample locations (stars) and paleocurrent data from Hubert et al. (1992). | rock crusher, sieved to separate the grains betweenTo get a broad representation of the basin fill within the Hartford basin, samples were taken from the Triassic New Haven Arkose (NH-15-1; SE basin- North Haven and NH-15-1; NW basin- Simsbury), the Jurassic East Berlin Fm (EB-15-2; center basin- Berlin), and the Jurassic Portland Fm (P-15-1; NE basin- Manchester and P-15-2; SE basin- Durham). Two samples of the Triassic South Britain Fm (SBF-2; Pierce Hollow and SBF-4; Rattlesnake Members) were collected in the SW Pomperaug basin (Figure 1). The samples were pulverized with a hydraulic 63 and 500mm in diameter, |