Provenance and correlation of Late Permian successions from the Falkland/Malvinas Islands with West Gondwana: implications for a Natal Embayment palaeo-location

Detrital zircon U-Pb and Lu-Hf data from the youngest (upper Permian) sedimentary succession of the Falkland/Malvinas Islands is used to constrain depositional age, provenance and palaeogeography, and test the Natal Embayment model for the Falkland/Malvinas Islands microplate. The upper Permian was a period of extensive magmatism and sediment recycling along the accretionary margin of West Gondwana. Deposition into retroarc foreland basins was widespread across South Africa, Antarctica, South America and the Falklands Islands, forming thick successions of fluvial, deltaic and shallow-marine units. Our analysis links the upper Permian (c. 260 Ma) Bay of Harbours Formation of the Falkland/Malvinas Islands with deltaic/fluvial volcaniclastic units from the Karoo Basin of South Africa, Theron Mountains of East Antarctica and sandstone of the Ellsworth Mountains and southern Antarctic Peninsula. These units all have a shared provenance from the Antarctic sector of the West Gondwana margin. Although the detrital zircon age profiles of the Falkland/Malvinas Islands sedimentary units overlap with those from the accretionary and volcanic complexes of Patagonia, Lu-Hf isotope compositions are clearly distinct indicating that there was no direct link between the upper Permian successions of the Falkland/Malvinas Islands (epsilon Hf -3 to +3) to the volcano-sedimentary successions of southern South America (epsilon Hf <-5)