The distribution of igneous rock suites throughout the Caribbean

Abstract

New analytical determinations for more than one hundred igneous samples enable us to place several circum-Caribbean igneous series into a tentative tectonic perspective. We consider that the basaltic rocks from Curaçao, Aruba, Tiara (Venezuela), and the mafic intrusives of the Paraguaná Peninsula (Venezuela) belong to a MORB association of possible early Late Cretaceous age, which is correlative with basinal basalts from the Caribbean, and which has been tectonically emplaced after eruption on to the continental border. Some stratigraphically early volcanic complexes from Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Désirade, Tobago, and Bonaire are placed in the primitive group, along with the early volcanics of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Plutonic rocks from Haiti and the Pedro Bank are somewhat high in K but not broadly different from those of Puerto Rico. The young volcanics of the central Dominican Republic are of the shoshonite (high-K) group. The plutonics of the southern Caribbean continental borderland are probably all calcalkaline, including those of Tobago. Several are notably high in cobalt, which further demonstrates that the southern Aves Ridge plutonics belong here and are not part of some other series.