Evaluation of two multidimensional discrimination diagrams from beach and deep-sea sediments from the Gulf of Mexico and their application to Precambrian clastic sedimentary rocks

Two discriminant-function-based multidimensional major-element diagrams for the tectonic discrimination of siliciclastic sediments were recently published from a coherent statistical methodology of loge-ratio transformation and linear discriminant analysis. These diagrams were constructed based on worldwide examples of Neogene–Quaternary siliciclastic sediments from known tectonic settings. In this work, these two tectonic discrimination diagrams were first successfully tested from Holocene (<0.0117–0 Ma) beach and deep-sea sediments from the Gulf of Mexico. These diagrams were used to decipher tectonic settings of 11 case studies of the Precambrian clastic sedimentary rocks (~512–2800 Ma) from Argentina, USA, Ghana, Spain, Norway, India, China, and Australia. The test and application results obtained from these discrimination diagrams were generally consistent with the geology of the Precambrian source areas. Therefore, the two multidimensional diagrams can be considered as a useful tool for successfully discriminating the tectonic setting of older sedimentary basins, which may consist of one or more tectonic assemblages. Comparison of results of this study with the previously published tectonic discrimination diagrams is illustrated and the probable reasons for some inconsistent inferences were also discussed.