Age and geodynamic aspects of the oldest rocks in the Precambrian Belomorian Belt of the Baltic (Fennoscandian) Shield

Abstract The Belomorian Belt in the White Sea region was until recently considered the oldest core of the Baltic Shield but is now recognized to be essentially Late Archaean. This study reports U-Pb zircon ages and whole-rock Nd-isotopic results for aluminous metasedimentary gneisses and tonalitic-trondhjemitic-granodioritic intrusions. Metamorphic zircons from the aluminous gneisses date the earliest high-grade metamorphism to about 2.86 Ga. This was a low- to moderate-pressure granulite-facies event. Multigrain fractions of detrital zircons from these gneisses preserve little memory of protolith ages, but the whole-rock Sm-Nd DM-model ages are below 3.0 Ga which excludes dominantly Early to Middle Archaean detritus sources and indicates a short crustal prehistory. For the tonalitic-trondhjemitic intrusive rocks, U-Pb zircon and Sm-Nd model ages define two generations formed c. 2.8 and 2.74–2.72 Ga ago. The oldest events in the Belomorian Belt can thus be correlated with Late Archaean developments in the adjoining Karelian Province further southwest in the Baltic Shield, but occurred at an active continental margin. This supports a Late Archaean accretional/collisional relationship between these two crustal segments.