Hump-shaped 40Ar/39Ar age spectra in K-feldspar and evidence for Cretaceous authigenesis in the Fountain Formation near Eldorado Springs, Colorado

The Fountain Formation near Eldorado Springs, CO, USA, shows evidence of alteration by hydrothermal fluids that precipitated authigenic potassium feldspar (adularia) as rims on detrital feldspars and as interstitial cement deposits. Detailed 40Ar/39Ar step-heating experiments of samples from the Fountain Formation reveal age spectra having a characteristic hump at laboratory temperatures between 900 and 1080°C. The humps appear to be related to the presence of adularia. Laser analyses of small grains of adularia indicate that the hump can be physically dissected, unlike age gradients found in igneous feldspars. Such behavior is consistent with the mixing of gas from two or more generations of K-feldspar, each having unique diffusion properties. The feldspars studied here indicate that two pulses of ∼150°C hydrothermal fluids migrated through the Fountain Formation at 135 and 94 Ma, prior to the main phase of Laramide tectonic activity in the region. The limited occurrence of authigenic cements suggests that reactivation of the underlying Precambrian Idaho Springs-Ralston Creek shear zone was significant enough to heat and mobilize large quantities of meteoric fluids. In addition, these data also suggest that Cretaceous movements along the Transcontinental Arch, correlated with stratigraphic events, began approximately 40 million years earlier than previously thought.