Ediacaran of the South Timan Ridge: Integrated palaeontology, detrital zircon geochronology and palaeomagnetism of Dzhezhim Formation (NE margin of Baltica)

The Ediacaran Period marked an important time interval of major transformations in Earth history, such as the first global radiation of animals and successive episodes of apparent mass extinction events, as well as dramatic change in geochemical cycles and climatic variations. Beyond that, the Ediacaran is characterised by significant perturbations in Earth’s magnetic field. However, the current understanding of the peculiarities of the Ediacaran geomagnetism is based on a limited amount of actual data, that requires obtaining new results necessary for testing existing hypotheses and developing new ideas in the Earth sciences. There is also a significant problem in interpretation of global palaeomagnetic data, and, in particular, for the Baltica palaeocontinent. In this light, the terrigenous red-colored sequences of the Dzhezhim Formation of the South Timan Ridge on the north-eastern margin of the East European Platform represent one of the most intriguing Neoproterozoic sections. In this paper we integrate a new result of palaeontological, detrital zircon geochronology and palaeomagnetic studies of the Dzhezhim Formation of the South Timan Ridge, Russia. Our analysis provides a more refined and complete understanding of the stratigraphic context and provenance evolution for the Proto-Uralides-Timanides formed in the Neoproterozoic on the passive Timanian-Uralian margin of the Baltica, and raises again with new urgency the problem of the geomagnetic field configuration in Ediacaran Period.