ALBERT

Notes: Abstract Existing geochronological data are reviewed and new Rb-Sr, K-Ar and 39Ar–40Ar ages are presented, including a suite of 33 mica ages from a 20 km north–south tunnel section. These data are discussed in relation to the thermal history from the overthrusting of the Autroalpine nappes c. 65 Myr ago to the present. The earliest phase of metamorphism, involving lawsonite crystallization, is associated with emplacement of these nappes. Subsequently, temperatures in the rocks beneath rose, at a mean rate of 3–6°C/Myr, until the climax of metamorphism.At high structural levels, published data indicate an age 〉 35 Myr for the metamorphic climax. In contrast, a new 39Ar–40Ar step-heating age of 23.8 ± 0.8 Myr on amphibole, from near the base of Peripheral Schieferhülle, closely approximates the age of metamorphism and provides the first clear indication that the climax of metamorphism occurred later at deeper structure levels. Following the climax, near-isothermal uplift and erosion reduced pressure to c. 1 kbar before white mica closure at 19 Myr; this implies uplift at 〉3 mm/yr.Along the tunnel section, white mica K-Ar ages vary systematically from 24 Myr to 16.5 Myr with position relative to a late 4 km amplitude dome whereas biotite Rb-Sr ages are uniform at 16.5 Myr across the whole profile; doming is thus dated at 16.5 Myr with transient uplift rates 〉5 mm/yr. At other times uplift rates were 〈1 mm/yr.

Notes: Abstract Granulites at Fyfe Hills in Enderby Land, Antarctica, crystallized at temperatures in excess of 850°C, and possibly as high as 1000°C, and at pressures of 8-10kbar during the mid to late Archaean. A number of features, including repeated retrograde metamorphism at 5.5-8kbar, retrograde reaction textures, and rimward zoning in pressure sensitive systems, suggest that following peak metamorphism the granulites stabilized at a depth of 18-26 km. After stabilization, the granulites cooled near-isobarically to temperatures of 600-700°C. Assuming a total crustal thickness of 35-40 km during this late Archaean interval of isobaric cooling, the peak metamorphic crustal thickness is estimated at 35-56 km. This estimate is significantly less than the 60-70 km obtained by summing the depths of the present levels of exposure (26-34 km) and the thickness of the crust presently beneath Fyfe Hills (approxi-mately 35km) and is, therefore, consistent with independent evidence for extensive post-Archaean thickening of the Enderby Land crust.

Notes: Abstract A Hercynian charnockite occurs within high-grade gneisses in the Agly Massif, French Pyrenees. Its thermal history has been evaluated using the Fe-Mg distribution coefticient (KD) between garnet and biotite. These minerals have different origins but similar compositions in the charnockites and host gneisses. In the charnockite, the Bi–Ga pairs are the retrograde products of Opx alteration. This Opx reaction with feldspar can be written. Opx + PI + Fluid 1(H2O + Al + K + Fe + Ti) = Bi + Ga + Q + Fluid 2(H2O + Na). The garnets are relatively Ca poor (4–2.5% grossular); they are automorphic and zoned in the gneisses and poikiloblastic in the charnockites. Both types show a retrograde rim (of few hundred microns’width) across which Fe and Mn increase as Mg decreases. The biotites show a good correlation between the octahedral cations (Ti4++ Fe2+) and (Mg2++ Al3+VI); Ti and Fe both increase, whereas Mg and AlVI decrease. There is an inverse linear correlation between Fe2+ and Mg2+ and the Fe/Mg ratio increases as Ti increases. The relation between Ti and KGa-BiDFe-Mg is less clear: it seems that KD slightly decreases as Ti increases. The equilibration temperatures of Ga–Bi pairs are discussed: the charnockite Ga-Bi pairs have equilibrated between 550°C and 600°C; whereas those of the gneisses have equilibrated between 550°C and 650°C. Two main thermal steps appear: one in the gneisses between 600-650°C and a second one in both the gneisses and the charnockites between 550°C and 600°C.

Notes: Abstract Whole-rock and mineral analyses of polydeformed mica-schist, quartzite, marble and amphibolite are presented from Signy Island, South Orkney Islands, part of the Scotia metamorphic complex. Whole-rock chemistry suggests that the amphibolites are the metamorphosed equivalent of enriched tholeiitic and alkali basalts of an oceanic intraplate basalt series. These, together with limestones and Mn-rich cherts of an oceanic island assemblage were tectonically mixed with trench or trench inner slope basin sediments in a subduction zone environment. Variation in mineral chemistry indicates an increase in temperature and decrease in pressure during metamorphism; pressures of 8 kbar and temperatures of approximately 545°C were reached during amphibolite facies metamorphism in the latter stages of deformation. These new data provide good evidence to support the previous interpretation of the Scotia metamorphic complex as a subduction complex.

Notes: Abstract The mid-Tertiary blueschists, eclogites and eclogitic gneisses of northern New Caledonia are the products of four phases of regional metamorphism and deformation (D1–D4). Omphacite, lawsonite and Mn-rich garnet isogradic surfaces were developed during the second deformation (D2) under prograde pressure and temperature conditions. Subsequent deformations (D3–D4) folded these D2 isogradic surfaces. However, within the P-retrograde, T-prograde metamorphic environment of the D4 phase, omphacite altered to albite and chlorite; as a result, a late-stage sub-horizontal isogradic surface developed for omphacite-out where this mineral preserved as relics within syn-D4 albite porphyroblasts. Other minerals that crystallized for the first time (epidote) or had rim additions (almandine phengite) during D4, also form nearly horizontal isogradic surfaces. Porphyroblastic garnet and albite contain inclusion trails, which allow their microstructural development and crystallization of the matrix to be traced from D2 to D4.Late syn-D4 the temperature increased markedly in association with an extensive exothermic decarbonation, even though the rocks were in a state of pressure retrogression. This caused considerable neocrystallization, recrystallization and growth of mattix and porphyroblasts such that, although S2 foliation crenulated by D3 and D4 is readily observable, almost all signs of stored strain due to D3 and D4 have been removed, and the deeper schists and eclogitic gneisses superficially appear to have undergone a drastic annealing recrystallization, post-dating deformation.

Notes: Abstract This, the second of two papers, represents the application of a least squares approach, discussed in the previous paper, to the generation of an internally consistent thermodynamic dataset involving 60 reactions among 43 phases, in the system K2O–Na2O–CaO–MgO–Al2O3–SiO2–H2O–CO2. We make the assumption that all the thermodynamic data, with the exception of enthalpies of formation of the phases, are well known, and solve for an internally consistent set of enthalpies which reproduces the 60, experimentally determined, phase equilibrium reactions. An important difference between our dataset and that of previous alternatives in the literature is that we are able to determine the uncertainties on, and correlations between, the enthalpies of formation for all phases in the set, and hence are able to apply simple error propagation techniques to determine the uncertainties in any phase equilibrium calculations performed using this dataset. Selection of reactions, for geothermometry and geobarometry, may be more readily made by choosing equilibria with small uncertainties in their thermodynamics. Our data are in reasonably close agreement with the high temperature molten oxide calorimetry results on silicate minerals where available, a fact which lends a degree of confidence to the results.

Notes: Abstract The Pennine rocks exposed in the south-east Tauern Window, Austria, contain mineral assemblages which crystallized in the mid-Tertiary ‘late Alpine’regional metamorphism. The pressure and temperature conditions at the thermal peak of this event have been estimated for rocks at four different structural levels using a variety of published and thermochemically derived geobarometers and geothermometers. The results are:(a) In the garnet+chlorite zone, 2–5 km structurally above the staurolite+biotite isograd: T= 490.50°C, P= 7° 1 kbar;(b) Within 0.5 km of the staurolite+biotite isograd: T= 560±300C, P=7.1 kbar;(c) In the staurolite+biotite zone, c. 2.5 km structurally below the staurolite+biotite isograd: T= 610±30°C, P=7.6±1.2 kbar;(d) In the staurolite+biotite zone, 3–4 km structurally below the staurolite+biotite isograd: T= 630±40°C, P= 6.6±1.2 kbar.The pressure estimates imply that the total thickness of overburden above the basement-cover interface in the mid-Tertiary was c. 26.4 km. This overburden can only be accounted for by the Austro-Alpine units currently exposed in the vicinity of the Tauern Window, if the Altkristallin (the ‘Middle Austro-Alpine’nappe) was itself buried beneath an ‘Upper Austro-Alpine’nappe or nappe-pile which was 7.4 km thick at that time.The occurrence of epidote + margarite + quartz pseudomorphs after lawsonite in garnet, indicates that part of the Mesozoic Pennine cover sequence in the south-east Tauern experienced blueschist-facies conditions (T〈450°C, P〈12 kbar) in early Alpine times. Evidence from the central Tauern is used to argue that the blueschist-facies imprint post-dated the main phase of tectonic thickening (D1A) and was thus a direct consequence of continental collision.Combined oxygen-isotope and fluid-inclusion studies on late-stage veins, thought to have been at lithostatic pressure and in thermal equilibrium with their host rocks during formation, suggest that they crystallized from aqueous fluids at 1.1±0.4 kbar and 420.20°C.Early Alpine, late Alpine and vein-formation P–T constraints have been used to construct a P–T path for the base of the Mesozoic cover sequence in the south-east Tauern Window. The prograde part of the P–T path, between early and late Alpine metamorphic imprints, is unlikely to have been a smooth curve and may well have had a low dP/dT overall; the decompression (presumably due to erosion) which occurred immediately before the thermal peak and possibly also earlier in the Tertiary, was probably partly or completely cancelled by the effects of early- to mid-Tertiary (D2A) tectonic thickening. The thermal peak of metamorphism was followed by a phase of almost isothermal decompression, which implies a period of rapid uplift in the middle Tertiary.The peak metamorphic P–T estimates are compared with the solutions of England's (1978) one-dimensional conductive thermal model of the Eastern Alps, and are shown to be consistent with the idea that the late Alpine metamorphism was caused by tectonic burial of the Pennine Zone beneath the Austro-Alpine nappes in the absence of extraneous heat sources, such as large intrusions, at depth.