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    Abstract In an attempt to elucidate their ages, the often incomplete and poorly known early Permian marine faunas and sequences of India, Tibet, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Oman are compared with those of the Perth, Carnarvon and Canning Basins of Western Australia, where faunas are documented and in sequence, and stratigraphic relationships between units are clear. This comparison indicates that the faunas discussed are Latest Asselian or younger in age, and that most of the underlying glacial beds are probably Early Permian (Asselian) in age. By implication, the Permo‐Carboniferous boundary for Gondwana is considered to lie at or near the base of Unit II/Stage 2 and equivalent palynomorph zones throughout Gondwana.
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    Reconstruction of the facies architecture and geometries of the Cambrian–Ordovician succession in the Central Andes of southern Bolivia and northwestern Argentina reveals a tripartite basin history that closely corresponds to interpretations of regional plate tectonic movements. The analysis of basin deposits enabled tracing and timing of movements of the Arequipa-Antofalla terrane, which initiated, fed, and terminated a basin between the terrane and Gondwana during the early Paleozoic. Tectonic movements started in the Cambrian and led to the formation of an extensional basin. Stretching was more pronounced in southern Bolivia than in northwestern Argentina, resulting in widening of the basin to...
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    Abstract A late Mesoproterozoic detrital zircon (DZ) age population, which was previously considered diagnostic of a link between the Lhasa terrane and northwest Australia, occurs in other Gondwanan components, thus obscuring the paleogeographic position of the Lhasa terrane in Gondwana. Here we compiled large‐ n ( n ≥ 300) DZ U‐Pb data from the Lhasa terrane and potential source regions in various proposed reconstructions, and attempted to synthesize the Lhasa DZ age spectra through DZ mixing modeling. Our modeling results support the Permo‐Carboniferous Lhasa terrane having received sediment from NW Australia (mainly the Perth basin) rather than India or Africa. This, in combination with stratigraphic and paleontological evidence from the northern margin of eastern Gondwana positions the Paleozoic Lhasa terrane adjacent to the boundary between Australia and India. This study suggests that the DZ mixing modeling method based on large‐ n DZ data can be used effectively for constraining paleogeographic reconstruction of continents.
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