Tracing carbonate diagenesis and hydrothermal activity during the opening of the Central South Atlantic: Insights from the Santos Basin (Brazil)

Abstract

The opening of the Central South Atlantic and the consequent formation of the eastern Brazilian continental margin was marked by a complex history of mafic magmatism, carbonate sedimentation, and deposition of a thick salt layer. The carbonates underlying the salt layer (pre-salt carbonates) were formed in restricted lacustrine basins. Here, the timing and fluid sources of deposition, diagenetic, and hydrothermal alterations of the pre-salt carbonate rocks are defined through in-situ U-Pb dating, ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr, and trace element analyses of samples from the Santos Basin. The very alkaline nature of the Aptian lake(s) produced characteristically unique and widely distributed carbonate rocks such as Mg-clays with calcite spherulite and calcite crystal shrub limestones transitioning laterally and vertically into travertines formed by hydrothermal pulses during basin evolution. Hydrothermalism caused extensive replacement, dissolution, and calcite cementation. REE+Y PAAS-normalised patterns and ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr ratios indicate that deposition/eo-diagenesis of the primary carbonates occurred in a lacustrine environment primarily controlled by evaporation, pH, and continental water source, with 2%-10% hydrothermal fluid input. Trace elements and Sr-isotope of travertines and burial diagenetic phases show that they are produced from a hot mixture of mafic/mantle-derived fluids and dissolution/alteration of older carbonate formations. U-Pb dating indicates that carbonate deposition occurred between 124.8 ± 2.6 Ma and 120.0 ± 1.6 Ma, earlier than previously proposed, followed closely by the circulation of hydrothermal fluids. Replacement and cementation ages range from 120.5 ± 2.4 Ma to 80.4 ± 2.4 Ma.

Keywords

Pre-salt / Carbonate / U-Pb dating / Sr-isotope / Trace elements / LA-ICP-MS

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Igor Figueiredo: Writing - review & editing, Writing - original draft, Visualization, Software, Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation. Cristiano Lana: Writing - review & editing, Writing - original draft, Validation, Supervision, Methodology, Investigation, Data curation, Conceptualization. Fernando F. Alkmim: Writing - review & editing, Supervision, Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation, Conceptualization. Marco A. Silva: Validation, Methodology, Investigation. Maria Eugênia S. Souza: Writing - review & editing, Investigation, Formal analysis. Dorval C. Dias-Filho: Project administration. Eveline E. Zambonato: Investigation, Data curation. Katia R.N. Mendonça: Investigation, Data curation.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Appendix A. Supplementary data

Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gsf.2025.102115.

Acknowledgements

C. Lana and F. F. Alkmim benefit from the Brazilian National Research Council (CNPq) research grants 3073353/2019-2 and 311543/2020-0. C. Lana, F. F. Alkmim, and Maria Eugênia Souza are part of the Instituto GeoAtlântico, a National Institute of Science and Technology, CNPq-Brazil process 405653/2022-0. We acknowledge Petrobras’s support during the investigation and permission to publish this study. I. Figueiredo acknowledged the Brazilian Federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education (CAPES) for Master's scholarship 88887.816343/2023-00. We thank Filipe N. Oliveira for the discussion on the petrography and diagenesis of the investigated rocks. We are grateful to Dr. Stefan Schroeder and Dr. Michael Strugale, for their insightful suggestions and careful review of the manuscript.

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