Depositional Controls on Detrital Zircon Provenance: An Example From Upper Cretaceous Strata, Southern Patagonia

Understanding how depositional environments within a sedimentary system redistribute and sequester sediment is critical for interpreting basin-scale provenance trends. However, source-to-sink models commonly examine temporal changes do not consider variation in sedimentation processes across dispersal pathway may result contrasting signatures. In this paper, we demonstrate down-paleoslope shift detrital zircon signatures correlated with shallow-marine lithofacies patterns from the Upper Cretaceous La Anita Formation underlying continental slope of Alta Vista (Magallanes-Austral Basin, southern Patagonia). New stratigraphic, sedimentologic, analysis results suggest an upward shoaling succession, 1) storm-influenced shoreface, 2) fluvially dominated, wave-influenced delta, 3) high-energy, gravelly foreshore. Stratigraphic sections are paired U-Pb sandstone samples (N = 20; n 5,219), which provide both maximum ages characteristics. While all contain abundant derived Andean volcanic arc (ca. 145–75 Ma), amount Jurassic distal massifs 188–162 Ma) recycled orogenic sources exhumed during advance fold-and-thrust belt (>200 Ma; 157–142 vary environment. We argue that down-paleoslope, systematic enriching local material reflective progressive mixing grains transported via processes, while distally enriched fluvio-deltaic zircons were sourced large, regional catchments. This suggests competition between transport shallow marginal marine sequence rocks affects resulting recorded single stratigraphic succession. These data also detail degree connectivity deep-marine sinks. Detrital muddy facies made up entirely locally material, deep-water, sand-rich channel indistinguishable coeval implies shelf-to-slope system, submarine canyons or shelf-edge delta progradation, necessary distributions realm to propagate into deeper marine.