The Orosirian São Francisco-Congo paleocontinent (SFCP) was one of the crustal segments involved in the Neoproterozoic-Early Paleozoic assembly of the Gondwana supercontinent. During this collisional event, its margins were reworked and fragmented, becoming preserved as basement inliers within the Brasiliano-Pan-African orogenic system. Despite its key role in understanding the processes responsible for the formation of Earth's earliest continental masses, the tectonic evolution and true extent of the SFCP remain poorly constrained. Within the Neoproterozoic Araçuaí Orogen there are several basement inliers, whose Archean and Paleoproterozoic rocks have been valuable to reconstructing SFCP. Here we report the discovery of a small basement inlier in the Southern Espinhaço Range, western domain of the Araçuaí Orogen. Based on integrated field observations, petrography, whole-rock geochemistry and U-Pb zircon geochronology, we characterize the rocks exposed in this inlier and discuss their regional significance. This inlier corresponds to a tectonic slice in which a Mesoarchean (ca. 2.87 Ga) metagranite - herein referred to as the Algodoeiro Metagranite - thrust over the metasedimentary rocks of the Espinhaço Supergroup. The Algodoeiro Metagranite consists of leucocratic, peraluminous, magnesian calc-alkaline metagranites that display moderately to strongly fractionated REE patterns with marked negative Eu anomalies. Petrographic and geochemical similarities, particularly REE slopes and multi-element patterns, combined with geochronological constraints, link these rocks to the gneisses of the Guanhães Complex, exposed in the Guanhães basement inlier, further east. Deformation and metamorphism recorded in the Algodoeiro Metagranite are interpreted as syn-to post-collisional in the context of the Brasiliano-Pan-African orogeny. Taken together, the data indicate that the Algodoeiro Metagranite represents a fragment of the SFCP tectonically reworked within the Araçuaí Orogen during the assembly of West Gondwana. This newly identified inlier therefore adds an important piece to the ongoing efforts to refining the tectonic evolution of eastern South America.
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