Subduction Zones of the Caribbean: the sedimentary, magmatic, metamorphic and ore-deposit records. UNESCO/IUGS-IGCP Project 546 Subduction Zones of the Caribbean
Abstract
This special issue of Geologica Acta, containing fourteen papers, is representative of the aims of IGCP 546, for it covers most of the cutting-edge topics pertaining to the Caribbean’s geological development from the Jurassic to the Neogene in the whole Caribbean region (Guatemala, Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Colombia, the isthmus of Panama, Costa Rica, and the offshore Nicaraguan rise). The issue was conceived during the workshop Subduction Zones of the Caribbean and associated field trip Subduction and arc complexes of central Cuba organized by IGCP 546 in the III Cuban Convention in Earth Sciences, held in Havana, Cuba, during March 2009. The study cases presented in the workshop and contained in this volume are indicated in Figure 1 and briefly commented below. Both the 2009 Havana workshop and this volume are dedicated to Wayne Travis Jolly, who passed away on February 9, 2008. As noted in his memorial (Edward Lidiak, this issue), Wayne Jolly was an enthusiastic and valuable petrologist of the Caribbean community. He devoted much of his career to studying the petrogenesis of Puerto Rican, Virgin Islands and other northeastern Antilles ancient island arc volcanic rocks, associated peridotite sources, and subducted sediments (see the references listed by Edward Lidiak in the memorial). Based on firm stratigraphic, regional and geochemical constraints, his work enabled the refining of the tectonic evolution of the northeastern Caribbean, with special emphasis on the evolution of the Mesozoic- Tertiary subduction systems. In his contributions, he suggested a persistent southwest-dipping Cretaceous convergence in the northeast Antilles and a subduction flip (from NE-dipping to SW-dipping) by the Aptian or even earlier (e.g., Pindell and Kennan, 2009; Pindell et al., in press, and references therein), challenging those portraying a subduction flip during the Late Cretaceous (e.g., Kerr et al., 2003, and references therein)
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To Cite this article: García-Casco, A., Proenza, J.A., Iturralde-Vinent, M.A. (2011): Subduction Zones of the Caribbean: the sedimentary, magmatic, metamorphic and ore-deposit records. UNESCO/IUGS-IGCP Project 546 Subduction Zones of the Caribbean. Geologica Acta, 9, 3-4, 217-224.
