• journal_title：Geology
• Contributor：R. Damian Nance ; Brent V. Miller ; J. Duncan Keppie ; J. Brendan Murphy ; Jaroslav Dostal
• Publisher：Geological Society of America
• Date：2006-
• Format：text/html
• Language：en
• Identifier：10.1130/G22642.1
• journal_abbrev：Geology
• issn：0091-7613
• volume：34
• issue：10
• firstpage：857

New structural, geochronological, and geochemical data from the Acatlán Complex of southern Mexico show that it preserves a complete history of Pangea, from assembly to breakup. Previously interpreted to be a vestige of the Iapetus suture, the Acatlán Complex records a history that can be sequentially linked to the Rheic Ocean, the paleo-Pacific, and the Gulf of Mexico. This record is interpreted to reflect: (1) the development of a rift-passive margin on the southern flank of the Rheic Ocean in the Cambrian–Ordovician; (2) the formation of an extensional regime along the formerly active northern margin of Gondwana throughout the Ordovician; (3) closure of the Rheic Ocean documented by subduction-related eclogite facies metamorphism and exhumation during the Late Devonian–Mississippian; (4) Permian–Triassic convergent tectonics on the paleo-Pacific margin of Pangea; and (5) interaction with a Jurassic mantle plume coeval with the opening of the Gulf of Mexico.