Late Cretaceous reactivation of major crustal shear zones in northern Namibia: Constraints from apatite fission track analysis

Abstract

Namibia's passive continental margin records a long history of tectonic activity since the Proterozoic. The orogenic belt produced during the collision of the Congo and Kalahari Cratons in the Early Proterozoic led to a zone of crustal weakness, which became the preferred location for tectonism during the Phanerozoic. The Pan-African Damara mobile belt forms this intraplate boundary in Namibia and its tectonostratigraphic zones are defined by ductile shear zones, where the most prominent is described as the Omaruru Lineament-Waterberg Thrust (OML-WT). The prominance of the continental margin escarpment is diminished in the area of the Central and Northern Zone of the Damara belt where the sh..