Geologicheskii Vestnik

A number of aspects of using U-Pb isotope ages of detrital zircon populations to decipher the composition and spatial location of provenances are discussed. It is shown that when analyzing and interpreting such data, it is important to remember that the chemical composition and isotope characteristics of detrital zircon can be used to identify clastic sources and map their transport routes to sinks only in cases where the detrital material was formed directly by the erosion of crystalline (igneous and metamorphic) rocks / protosources. Recycling of older sedimentary strata, which is the source of a significant part of the detrital material that makes up sands and sandstones, leads to the loss of connections between the parent rock and the final sediment. Various traps of clastics in their transport systems and a number of other processes of the sedimentogenesis stage act in the same way.

detrital zircon, recycling, large rivers, clastic transport systems

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