The exhumation history of mountain belts can be derived from radiometric dating of detrital mineral grains in proximal and distal post- and synorogenic sediments. The application of single-crystal dating techniques avoids the averaging effect that characterizes multi-grain and whole-rock techniques and allows the identification of populations of grains with distinct thermal histories. Of the major single crystal dating methods available, 40Ar/39Ar dating of detrital K-bearing minerals, in particular white mica, is perhaps the most versatile and widely applied technique. For a closure temperature of Ar of 350–400°C, muscovite 40Ar/39Ar ages record the time a rock mass passed through 8–10 km beneath actively eroding mountain belts. Detrital muscovit ages eroded from orogenic mountain belts have been used extensively to identify the provenance of sediments from source regions with distinct thermal histories, determine the history and rate of exhumation of the source region, and provide an upper limit on the sediment age. Here I review the principles of 40Ar/39Ar dating of detrital muscovite and illustrate the method with examples showing how the provenance and the thermal history of sediment source regions derived from such studies can be used to constrain the exhumation and tectonic history of orogenic belts.

Single grains of detrital white mica from two different synorogenic sediments in the Southern Urals were analysed using the in situ ultraviolet laser ablation Ar–Ar dating technique to discriminate between age signatures associated with a high-pressure signal (phengites) from those related to muscovite only. Two disparately aged sandstone formations of Neoproterozoic (Upper Vendian) and Upper Devonian (Famennian) age were formed by the erosion of high-relief source areas with contemporaneously exhumed high-pressure rocks. A bimodal distribution of ages and chemical compositions can be detected in the two detrital populations. There is no age overlap between the two populations, reflecting completely different source areas containing high-pressure rocks of different ages. Within the Upper Vendian sandstones, detrital white mica from a 571–609 Ma age group is phengitic in composition (Si 3.3–3.41 per formula unit), while an older 645–732 Ma age group is comprised of muscovite composition grains only. The first group is compatible with the time of late exhumation and emplacement of a source area containing high-pressure rocks, the Neoproterozoic Beloretzk terrane. The older age range is compatible with a long history of cooling and the allochthonous nature of this terrane. Detrital white mica from the Famennian sandstones (Zilair Formation) comprises one age group (342–421 Ma) containing phengite (Si 3.21–3.39 per formula unit) and muscovite, and a second group (446–496 Ma) containing muscovite only. While the derivation of the second group cannot be correlated with any as yet known regional data, the first age group indicates the earliest arrival of high-pressure rocks at the surface along the suture zone after Late Devonian arc–continent collision.

Lamproite dykes that cross-cut Middle Jurassic Karoo-related flood basalts in Vestfjella, Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica, have been dated at 158.7±1.6 Ma by 40Ar/39 Ar incremental heating of phlogopite. Compared to most lamproites, these dykes are unusually low in SiO2 (40.09–40.18 wt%) and high in CaO (12.35–16.24 wt%) and P2O5 (3.03–3.81 wt%). They have broad affinities to spatially and temporally related group II kimberlites of southern Africa, but the geochemically closest correlatives are CaO- and P2O5-rich diopside madupitic lamproites from Leucite Hills, USA. The Kjakebeinet lamproites are notably high in incompatible elements, show negative initial εNd values (−6.0, −6.7) and positive initial εSr values (+14, +17) with TDM model ages of c. 1.1 Ga, and probably record melting of metasomatized subcontinental lithospheric mantle beneath western Dronning Maud Land. Their emplacement records the youngest recognized magmatic event in the region, coincides with the proposed second and final stage of Gondwana breakup between Africa and Antarctica, and may be associated with deep-seated coast-parallel strike-slip faulting in Dronning Maud Land. Survival of old, easily fusible lithospheric mantle material 20 Ma after the eruption of voluminous flood basalt magmas suggests that the latter were emplaced within narrow zones of lithospheric thinning and that the source of lamproites remained largely intact between these zones.

Knowledge of the late Miocene–Pliocene climate of West Antarctica, recorded by sedimentary units within the James Ross Island Volcanic Group, is still fragmentary. Late Miocene glaciomarine deposits at the base of the group in eastern James Ross Island (Hobbs Glacier Formation) and Late Pliocene (3 Ma) interglacial strata at its local top on Cockburn Island (Cockburn Island Formation) have been studied extensively, but other Neogene sedimentary rocks on James Ross Island have thus far not been considered in great detail. Here, we document two further occurrences of glaciomarine strata, included in an expanded Hobbs Glacier Formation, which demonstrate the stratigraphic complexity of the James Ross Island Volcanic Group: reworked diamictites intercalated within the volcanic sequence at Fiordo Belén, northern James Ross Island, are dated by 40Ar/39Ar and 87Sr/86Sr at c. 7 Ma (Late Miocene), but massive diamictites which underlie volcanic rocks near Cape Gage, on eastern James Ross Island, yielded an Ar–Ar age of <3.1 Ma (Late Pliocene). These age assignments are confirmed by benthic foraminiferal index species of the genus Ammoelphidiella. The geological setting and Cassidulina-dominated foraminiferal biofacies of the rocks at Fiordo Belén suggest deposition in water depths of 150–200 m. The periglacial deposits and waterlain tills at Cape Gage were deposited at shallower depths (<100 m), as indicated by an abundance of the pectinid bivalve ‘Zygochlamys’ anderssoni and the epibiotic foram Cibicides lobatulus. Macrofaunal and foraminiferal biofacies of glaciomarine and interglacial deposits share many similarities, which suggests that temperature is not the dominant factor in the distribution of late Neogene Antarctic biota. Approximately 10 m.y. of Miocene–Pliocene climatic record is preserved within the rock sequence of the James Ross Island Volcanic Group. Prevailing glacial conditions were punctuated by interglacial conditions around 3 Ma.