Maximum depositional age and provenance of the Uinta Mountain group and big cottonwood formation, northern Utah: Paleogeography of rifting western Laurentia

U-Pb detrital zircon analyses provide a new maximum depositional age constraint on the Uinta Mountain Group (UMG) and correlative Big Cottonwood Formation (BCF) of Utah, and significantly enhance our insights on the mid-Neoproterozoic paleogeographic and tectonic setting of western Laurentia. A sandstone interval of the Outlaw Trail formation with a youngest population (n = 4) of detrital zircons, from a sampling of 128 detrital zircon grains, yields a concordia age of 766 ± 5 Ma. This defines a maximum age for deposition of the lower-middle Uinta Mountain Group in the eastern Uinta Mountains and indicates that the group is no older than middle Neoproterozoic in age (i.e., Cryogenian). These data support a long-proposed correlation with the Chuar Group of Grand Canyon (youngest age 742 Ma ± 6 Ma), which, like the Uinta Mountain Group and Big Cotton-wood Formation, records nonmagmatic intracratonic extension. This suggests a ~742 to ≤766 Ma extensional phase in Utah and Arizona that preceded the regional rift episode (~670-720 Ma), which led to development of the Cordilleran passive margin. This is likely an intracratonic response to an early rift phase of Rodinia. Further, because the Chuar Group and the Uinta Mountain Group-Big Cottonwood Formation strata record intracratonic marine deposition, this correlation suggests a regional ~740-770 Ma transgression onto western Laurentia. The detrital grain-age distributions from 12 samples include the following grain-age populations and interpreted provenance: 2.5-2.7 Ga (late Archean southern Wyoming province); 1.6-1.8 Ga (Paleoproterozoic Yavapai province); 1.5-1.6 Ga (Early Meso proterozoic North American mag-matic gap), 1.4-1.45 Ga (Colorado province A-type graniterhyolite belt); 0.93-1.2 Ga (eastern Grenvillian orogen); and mid-Neoproterozoic volcanic grains (766 Ma). Sediment was transported by: (1) a major longitudinal west-flowing river system tapping the Grenville orogen, (2) local south-flowing drainages off the southern Wyoming craton, and (3) northerly and westerly flowing marine currents. The Uinta Mountain Group river system was one of several major transcontinental drainages that delivered Grenvillian zircon grains to the proto-Pacific Ocean. We propose that this river system ultimately supplied sediment to peri-Gondwanan margins along the proto-Pacific to Antarctica, Australia, and South America, providing an alternative source for explaining the problematic provenance of Grenvillian grains in these areas.