Mid-Cretaceous porphyritic magmatism in the Beartooth Mountains of the northern Laramide foreland and its connection to Frontier Formation sediment dispersal in Bighorn basin, Montana-Wyoming (USA), and Cordilleran tectonism
Porphyritic intrusions in the southeast Beartooth Mountains and porphyritic cobbles from the Torchlight conglomerate of the Cenomanian Frontier Formation in Bighorn basin (Montana-Wyoming, USA) bear striking resemblance. We utilize geologic mapping, petrography, geochemistry, and geochronology to characterize rocks from both locations and test whether the Beartooth Mountains area was the provenance for Bighorn basin cobbles. Mapping on Line Creek Plateau in the Beartooth Mountains shows three units with porphyritic phenocrysts consisting dominantly of plagioclase, plagioclase + potassium feldspar, and plagioclase + quartz. Petrography shows embayed quartz, opacitic rims, and zoned plagioclase. Geochemistry characterizes the intrusions as trachydacite to trachyte and trace elements exhibit enrichment in light rare earth elements and slight depletion in heavy rare earth elements relative to primitive mantle. Zircon U-Pb dating shows substantial Archean inheritance and ca. 104−92 Ma dates; some samples display multiple mid-Cretaceous date populations. Bighorn basin porphyritic cobbles exhibit similar modal mineralogy, near-identical geochemistry, and Archean inheritance and mid-Cretaceous geochronology. We suggest the porphyritic cobbles were sourced from basement-hosted porphyritic intrusions now exposed in the Beartooth Mountains, given that geochemistry does not agree with coeval volcanic sources along the Frontier Formation depositional fairway (Idaho batholith) or sedimentary-hosted Beartooth Mountains porphyritic sills intruded into Cambrian shale. Stratigraphic evidence does not support kilometer-scale mid-Cretaceous Beartooth Mountains exhumation to expose basement-hosted porphyritic intrusions, and we therefore present a volcanic hypothesis to bring rocks to the surface. This mid-Cretaceous multimillion-year magmatism is unexplained by tectonic models for the north-central Laramide foreland, and thus we further explore the emplacement processes, spatiotemporal significance, and tectonic implications of these rocks.