Dating late stage deformation of the Western Alps (2024)

Project description

The recent development of calcite U-Pb dating at ISTerre in the frame of Dorian Bienveignant’s Ph.D. thesis provides the opportunity to date deformation of the foreland of theWestern Alps during the late stages of the Alpine orogeny. Previous work by Dorian has demonstrated that calcite U-Pb dating works well for calcite precipitated in fault zones within the Mesozoic and Cenozoic sedimentary cover rocks of the Western Alps, but is inhibited by very low U concentrations and common Pb contaminations of calcite precipitated on faults in crystalline rocks of the External Crystalline Massifs. Therefore, we extend Dorian’s study area to the northern Provence region in order to complete the existing dataset and to obtain the information needed on the timing of deformation for constraining landscape evolution models.