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Implications of illite X-ray diffraction characteristics and K–Ar dating for the tectonics of Mallorca (Spain)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2025

Jan Środoń Open the ORCID record for Jan Środoń [Opens in a new window] ,
Marek Szczerba  and
Maciej J. Bojanowski Open the ORCID record for Maciej J. Bojanowski [Opens in a new window]
Jan Środoń*
Affiliation:
Institute of Geological Sciences, Polish Academy of Sciences, Kraków, Poland
Marek Szczerba
Affiliation:
Institute of Geological Sciences, Polish Academy of Sciences, Kraków, Poland
Maciej J. Bojanowski
Affiliation:
Institute of Geological Sciences, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland
*
Corresponding author: Jan Środoń; Email: ndsrodon@cyf-kr.edu.pl
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Abstract

Serra de Tramuntana of Mallorca is a mountain range built of a stack of thrust sheets composed mostly of Mesozoic platform carbonates, and it formed in the Oligocene and Miocene during the Alpine orogeny. Volcanic rocks, intruding the Triassic sediments, and known mostly from the bottom of the lowest thrust sheet, offer an opportunity for dating the post-sedimentary thermal history of this mountain range and for evaluating the maximum palaeotemperatures by studying the mineralogy and K–Ar dating of authigenic illite. Such a study was conducted on 16 samples from two outcrops, employing X-ray diffraction (XRD), optical microscopy, electron probe microanalysis and K–Ar dating of separated clay fractions. Illite was found in 10 samples, but only one sample was identified as pure volcanic rock, not contaminated by older detrital material. This sample yielded a K–Ar age of 133–140 Ma, which is within the experimental error for three grain-size fractions. This was confirmed by extrapolating the ages of a contaminated sample, and it is interpreted as representing the age of the maximum palaeotemperatures. These palaeotemperatures were estimated using several illite characteristics, including the Kübler Index applied to shales as below but close to the diagenesis/anchimetamorphism boundary (180–200°C). The dated pre-tectonic early Cretaceous thermal event is interpreted as recording the extremely high geothermal gradient at the end of the Mesozoic extensional phase. The maximum palaeotemperatures during the Oligocene–Miocene tectonic burial of Mallorca were not high enough to reset the Mesozoic K–Ar age of illite, thus being lower than ∼250°C, and, based on the preserved Cretaceous illite XRD characteristics, lower than 180–200°C.

Keywords

Balearic PromontoryCenozoic thrustingdiagenesisgeothermal gradientMesozoic extensionSerra de Tramuntanashallow burial illitization

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Type
Article
Information
Clay Minerals , Volume 60 , Issue 3 , September 2025 , pp. 259 - 272
Copyright
© Polish Academy of Sciences, Institute of Geological Sciences, 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Mineralogical Society of the United Kingdom and Ireland.

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Footnotes

Associate Editor: Martine Buatier

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