Abstract
Belonging to the huge Ouarzazate volcanic group that covered the whole Anti-Atlas during the late Ediacaran (580-545 Ma), the Tifnoute Valley volcanic formations are mainly pyroclastic and show a large composition, from trachybasalt to rhyolite and are crosscut by dolerite dikes. The Tifnoute Valley volcanic rocks are located within a rigid salient of the Anti-Atlas that gives them special extreme characteristics. Due to the heavy greenschist alteration that affects this volcanic group, we focused the more immobile elements, but as REE can also be affected, we used the composition of unaltered clinopyroxene crystals to determine the nature of these volcanic rocks. The clinopyroxene is an augite diopside in the basalt, an augite in the andesite and an augite-salite in the dolerite. Petrography of the Tifnoute mafic volcanic rocks and clinopyroxene compositions indicate the presence of two magmatic series: (i) older high-K calc-alkaline (alkali-calcic) andesite and basalt characterized by the early crystallization of Fe-Ti oxides and of the late fractionation of plagioclase, the modal proportion of the latter increasing from the basalt to the andesite and (ii) younger alkalic dolerite dikes. With clinopyroxene trace element compositions obtained using laser ablation ICP-MS, we calculated the composition of the melts in equilibrium with the pyroxenes. The volcanic rocks of the Tifnoute Valley have positive epsilon Nd (sub 570) (+1.7 to +5.0), low Sr (sub i) (<0.7063), and NdT (sub DM) model ages ranging from 0.80 to 1.14 Ga, indicating a mostly depleted Neoproterozoic source with limited involvement of the Eburnian lithosphere for the Tifnoute magmas. This depleted source is the young lithospheric mantle for the alkali-calcic series and the asthenosphere for the younger alkalic series. The Tifnoute Valley volcanic rocks emplaced in a Pan-African transtensive post-collisional environment that evolved towards the major rifting event that will give rise to the Rheic ocean, in a similar way to what occurred just after the Variscan Orogeny during the Triassic period that evolved to the Tethys ocean opening.