U-Pb (zircon) age for the Beaver Harbour Porphyry, New River belt, southern New Brunswick, Canada

Abstract

The Beaver Harbour Porphyry is a high-level intermediate to felsic granitoid and locally tuffaceous unit with quartz and less abundant feldspar phenocrysts. It forms a fault-bound sliver along the southern margin of the New River belt in southern New Brunswick. A concordant TIMS U-Pb (zircon) age of 551 ± 1.2 Ma shows that the porphyry is of the same age as other high-level plutonic and volcanic units that form most of the New River belt. Chemical data show that these units likely formed in a volcanic-arc environment at an active continental margin. One sample from the porphyry has ƐNd(t) of -0.5, within the range of other samples from the New River belt and consistent with the interpretation that the belt is part of Ganderia, rather than Avalonia, which generally has more juvenile isotopic signatures.

Keywords:

• Igneous petrology,
• U-Pb zircon dating,
• Ganderia