Zircon U-Pb dating for the earliest Neoproterozoic mafic magmatism in the southern margin of the North China Block

Huge diabase occurs within the Pro- terozoic strata in the southern margin of the North China Block, geographically in the northern parts of Anhui and Jiangsu provinces, where no strata younger than Neoproterozoic have been found. Zir- cons from the diabase show three different structures from cathodoluminesecence imaging, but they are all of magmatic origin. SHRIMP U-Pb dating yields a range of 206Pb/238U ages from 2600 to 124 Ma, but two geological events can clearly be identified from both concordant and discordant ages. One gives two weighted mean 207Pb/206Pb ages of 976 ± 24 and 1038 ± 26 Ma which are interpreted as timing of dia- base crystallization, and the other has a weighted mean 207Pb/206Pb age of 2523 ± 52 Ma that repre- sents formation time of inherited zircon from the old crust. The dating results indicate that the mafic magmatic event occurred in a transition period from the latest Mesoproterozoic to the earliest Neopro- terozoic, consistent with global subduction of Grenvill ocean crust to result in the assembly of superconti- nent Rodinia. Therefore, the North China Block needs to be taken into account when reconstructing the position of China continents within the framework of Rodinia supercontinent.