Exhumation response to oceanic plateau accretion and oroclinal bending: Low-temperature thermochronology study of Wrangellia terrane on southern Vancouver Island, Canada

Abstract

Approximately 50 Myr ago, the triple junction of the Kula-Farallon-North America plates converged with the continental margin, causing ridge subduction and the formation, accretion and translation of two oceanic plateaus. We investigate the effects of this tectonic configuration on the exhumation of southern Wrangellia terrane on southern Vancouver Island since the Eocene. We report late Cretaceous to late Oligocene (85.4 to 23.3 Ma) apatite fission track ages (AFT) and, for the first time, Oligocene to early Miocene (36.6 to 14.0 Ma) apatite (UTh)/He ages (AHe) for 16 bedrock samples of Wrangellia. The thermal history modelling of these ages for 13 samples reveals variable cooling patterns between regions. Samples close to the major faults of a fold and thrust belt show accelerated cooling (4–5 °C/Myr) during the Eocene. In the central area, the modelled cooling rates have been slow and generally uniform throughout the Cenozoic (0.5–1.5 °C/Myr), whereas samples from the west coast yielded very slow cooling (<0.5 °C/Myr) from 70 to 30 Ma, followed by moderate cooling (1.5–3 °C/Myr) since. Combining ages, fission track length and thermal history models in this and previous studies, we interpret the moderate-accelerated exhumation of the fold and thrust belt in the Eocene to be a response to oroclinal bending following oceanic plateau accretion. The exhumation pattern of the western side of southern Wrangellia is linked to the ongoing Cascadian Subduction zone ca.30 Ma. This exhumation pattern also supports a hypothesis that all crust of southern Wrangellia was all overlain by sedimentary strata in Eocene before ∼50 Ma, and that an accretionary complex of the Pacific Rim terrane was partly the outboard equivalent of these strata. In the southern Wrangellia, no exhumation response to the Miocene oroclinal bending associated with formation of the Olympic mountains is observed.