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Stoping and the mechanisms of emplacement of the granites in the Western Ring Complex of the Galway granite batholith, western Ireland
- Bernard Elgey Leake
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- Journal:
- Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of The Royal Society of Edinburgh / Volume 102 / Issue 1 / March 2011
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 01 March 2011, pp. 1-16
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- March 2011
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The western end of the Galway granite batholith demonstrates the importance of stoping as a granite emplacement process, which is currently controversial, and also of space generation by uplift of the centre of a ring complex. The granite rings are shown (with a coloured 1:25 000 geological map) to be consanguineous, near coeval, and older than the 407–410 Ma late molybdenite mineralisation. A newly-recognised Mace–Ards granite, around and injected by the Aplitic Murvey-type granite of the ring core (both lacking hornblende and titanite), has biotite–muscovite–cordierite orbs and sulphide–granite orbs, showing separation of immiscible hydrous and sulphide fluids from the late magma which, with vugs, indicates a low pressure, near-roof site. The outer ring of the Errisbeg Townland granite (ETG, the main batholith granite with K-feldspar phenocrysts), was emplaced by progressive outward stoping of the country rock metagabbro, as shown by mapping, and by chemical fractionation of feldspars, biotites and bulk rocks, to the marginal, dry, fine-grained aphyric, in part garnetiferous, highly fractionated, siliceous Murvey granite. Stoping ceased when, after previously invading dense metagabbro, the outer ring complex reached the low-density Roundstone granite, which is shown for the first time to be older than the Galway batholith. This arresting of the batholith intrusion shows that stoping was such a significant process that emplacement ceased when stoping became impossible. The inside edge of the ETG grades into the slightly later, intrusive, aphyric Carna granite, which shows inward fractionation to the wet magma of the Mace–Ards granite. The ring complex core was injected by highly fractionated, dry, Aplitic Murvey-type granite, intensely hydrothermally altered by late magmatic water. The radially outward dipping, inclined igneous layering in the ETG shows that the original ETG centre was pushed upwards by the intruded Carna granite and eroded away. The Galway granite and its nearby magmatism matches the low Ba and Sr, high Th and Rb, Scottish Cairngorm Suite and similarly has few appinitic rocks associated with it. Magmatism extended over >45 Myr from ∼425 Ma to 380 Ma. It originated by slab breakoff and consequent rise of the asthenosphere, causing deep crustal melting.
Crustal melt granites and migmatites along the Himalaya: melt source, segregation, transport and granite emplacement mechanisms
- M. P. Searle, J. M. Cottle, M. J. Streule, D. J. Waters
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- Journal:
- Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of The Royal Society of Edinburgh / Volume 100 / Issue 1-2 / March 2009
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 01 March 2009, pp. 219-233
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- March 2009
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India–Asia collision resulted in crustal thickening and shortening, metamorphism and partial melting along the 2200 km-long Himalayan range. In the core of the Greater Himalaya, widespread in situ partial melting in sillimanite+K-feldspar gneisses resulted in formation of migmatites and Ms+Bt+Grt+Tur±Crd±Sil leucogranites, mainly by muscovite dehydration melting. Melting occurred at shallow depths (4–6 kbar; 15–20 km depth) in the middle crust, but not in the lower crust. 87Sr/86Sr ratios of leucogranites are very high (0·74–0·79) and heterogeneous, indicating a 100 crustal protolith. Melts were sourced from fertile muscovite-bearing pelites and quartzo-feldspathic gneisses of the Neo-Proterozoic Haimanta–Cheka Formations. Melting was induced through a combination of thermal relaxation due to crustal thickening and from high internal heat production rates within the Proterozoic source rocks in the middle crust. Himalayan granites have highly radiogenic Pb isotopes and extremely high uranium concentrations. Little or no heat was derived either from the mantle or from shear heating along thrust faults. Mid-crustal melting triggered southward ductile extrusion (channel flow) of a mid-crustal layer bounded by a crustal-scale thrust fault and shear zone (Main Central Thrust; MCT) along the base, and a low-angle ductile shear zone and normal fault (South Tibetan Detachment; STD) along the top. Multi-system thermochronology (U–Pb, Sm–Nd, 40Ar–39Ar and fission track dating) show that partial melting spanned ̃24–15 Ma and triggered mid-crustal flow between the simultaneously active shear zones of the MCT and STD. Granite melting was restricted in both time (Early Miocene) and space (middle crust) along the entire length of the Himalaya. Melts were channelled up via hydraulic fracturing into sheeted sill complexes from the underthrust Indian plate source beneath southern Tibet, and intruded for up to 100 km parallel to the foliation in the host sillimanite gneisses. Crystallisation of the leucogranites was immediately followed by rapid exhumation, cooling and enhanced erosion during the Early–Middle Miocene.
The Trawenagh Bay Granite and a new model for the emplacement of the Donegal Batholith
- Carl T. E. Stevenson, Donald H. W. Hutton, Alun R. Price
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- Journal:
- Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of The Royal Society of Edinburgh / Volume 97 / Issue 4 / 2008
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 11 January 2017, pp. 455-477
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- 2008
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The Trawenagh Bay Granite (TBG) is shown to be a tabular pluton with gently inclined contacts that, from anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility (AMS) studies, was emplaced as a series of flow lobes whose geometries indicate that it flowed horizontally towards the W out of late stage adjacent steeply inclined monzogranite sheets of the Main Donegal Granite (MDG). We thus confirm in detail the central broad idea of the Pitcher & Read (1959) model that the Main Donegal Granite fed the Trawenagh Bay Granite. Early TBG flow lobes cut and are cut by deformation associated with the sinistral shear zone in which the MDG lies, thus demonstrating synchronicity of shearing and magmatism. The TBG magma leaked out of the shear zone and emplaced into undeformed country rocks and was probably guided by shear zone splays that die out along its northern and southern margins. At a late stage in the development of MDG, the splays developed from the NNE-trending SW boundary of the shear zone and caused a gap in this structure through which TBG magma was channelled out of the MDG. A review is presented of the last twenty-five years of published and unpublished work on the batholith, showing that the MDG shear zone was a long-lived structure almost certainly in existence before the emplacement of that body, and that four of the contiguous granitiods (Thorr, Ardara, and Rosses, as well as Trawenagh Bay) were all sourced within the shear zone. A new model is presented for the development of the batholith. The pre-existing crustal structure was a deep-seated N12°E fault in the basement to the Dalradian wall rocks of the granites, that was coupled to up to six other more minor WNW-ESE basement faults in the W. A NE-SW-trending sinistral shear zone was initiated at the end of the Caledonian orogeny, as calc-alkaline and deep-seated appinites were generated in the area. This shearing activated the pre-existing structures at the current crustal level, and the N12°E structure acted as a continental transform fault which allowed the dilation needed to facilitate the wedging space requirements of the MDG and the other units in the shear zone, as well as transferring regional sinistral shear through the system. The Thorr and Ardara plutons were emplaced first into the shear zone and then those magmas leaked out into the adjacent wall rocks: one to form a large laccolith, the other to form a balloon. Steep early MDG complex sheets (granodiorites and tonalities) were emplaced in the shear zone between the Thorr and Ardara emplacement sites. Dilation continued until late stage extensive monzogranite sheets were intruded in the NW and SE of the pluton. One of these probably leaked material westward to form the Rosses laccolith and southwestwards to form the TBG in the final stages of shear zone movement.
The Trawenagh Bay Granite and a new model for the emplacement of the Donegal Batholith
- Carl T. E. Stevenson, Donald H. W. Hutton, Alun R. Price
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- Journal:
- Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh: Earth Sciences / Volume 97 / Issue 4 / 2008
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 12 August 2008, pp. 455-477
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- 2008
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The Trawenagh Bay Granite (TBG) is shown to be a tabular pluton with gently inclined contacts that, from anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility (AMS) studies, was emplaced as a series of flow lobes whose geometries indicate that it flowed horizontally towards the W out of late stage adjacent steeply inclined monzogranite sheets of the Main Donegal Granite (MDG). We thus confirm in detail the central broad idea of the Pitcher & Read (1959) model that the Main Donegal Granite fed the Trawenagh Bay Granite. Early TBG flow lobes cut and are cut by deformation associated with the sinistral shear zone in which the MDG lies, thus demonstrating synchronicity of shearing and magmatism. The TBG magma leaked out of the shear zone and emplaced into undeformed country rocks and was probably guided by shear zone splays that die out along its northern and southern margins. At a late stage in the development of MDG, the splays developed from the NNE-trending SW boundary of the shear zone and caused a gap in this structure through which TBG magma was channelled out of the MDG. A review is presented of the last twenty-five years of published and unpublished work on the batholith, showing that the MDG shear zone was a long-lived structure almost certainly in existence before the emplacement of that body, and that four of the contiguous granitiods (Thorr, Ardara, and Rosses, as well as Trawenagh Bay) were all sourced within the shear zone. A new model is presented for the development of the batholith. The pre-existing crustal structure was a deep-seated N12°E fault in the basement to the Dalradian wall rocks of the granites, that was coupled to up to six other more minor WNW–ESE basement faults in the W. A NE–SW-trending sinistral shear zone was initiated at the end of the Caledonian orogeny, as calc-alkaline and deep-seated appinites were generated in the area. This shearing activated the pre-existing structures at the current crustal level, and the N12°E structure acted as a continental transform fault which allowed the dilation needed to facilitate the wedging space requirements of the MDG and the other units in the shear zone, as well as transferring regional sinistral shear through the system. The Thorr and Ardara plutons were emplaced first into the shear zone and then those magmas leaked out into the adjacent wall rocks: one to form a large laccolith, the other to form a balloon. Steep early MDG complex sheets (granodiorites and tonalities) were emplaced in the shear zone between the Thorr and Ardara emplacement sites. Dilation continued until late stage extensive monzogranite sheets were intruded in the NW and SE of the pluton. One of these probably leaked material westward to form the Rosses laccolith and southwestwards to form the TBG in the final stages of shear zone movement.
Mechanism of emplacement and crystallisation history of the northern margin and centre of the Galway Granite, western Ireland
- Bernard Elgey Leake
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- Journal:
- Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh: Earth Sciences / Volume 97 / Issue 1 / March 2006
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 26 July 2007, pp. 1-23
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- March 2006
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The main phase (∼400 Ma) emplacement of the central and northern part of the reversely zoned Galway Granite was incremental by progressive northward marginal dyke injection and stoping of the 470–467 Ma Connemara metagabbro-gneiss country rock. The space was provided by the synchronous ESE-opening, along the strike of the country rocks, of extensional fractures generated successively northward by a releasing bend in the sinistrally moving Skird Rocks Fault or an equivalent Galway Bay Fault. This fault is a prolongation of the Antrim–Galway (a splay off the Highland Boundary Fault) and Southern Upland Faults. The ESE-strike of the spalled-off rocks controlled the resultant ESE-elongated shape of the batholith. The magma pulses (∼5–30 m in thickness) were progressively more fractionated towards the northern margin so that the coarse Porphyritic (or Megacrystic) Granite (GP; technically granodiorite) in the centre was followed outwards by finer grained, drier and more siliceous granite, until the movements opening the fractures ceased and the magma became too viscous to intrude. ‘Out-of-sequence’ pulses of more basic diorite-granodiorite (including the Mingling–Mixing Zone) and late main phase, more acid, coarse but Aphyric Granite, into the centre of the batholith, complicated the outward fractionation scheme. The outward expansion, caused by the intrusions into the centre, caused a foliation and flattening of cognate xenoliths within the partly crystallised northern marginal granite and in the Mingling–Mixing Zone to the south.
Late phase (∼380 Ma) central intrusions of the newly-discovered aphyric Shannapheasteen Finegrained Granite (technically granodiorite), the Knock, the Lurgan and the Costello Murvey Granites, all more siliceous and less dense than the GP, were emplaced by pushing up the already solid and jointed GP along marginal faults. This concentration of lighter granites plus compression shown in thrusting, caused overall fault uplift of the Central Block of the Galway batholith so that the originally deepest part of the GP is exposed where there is the most late phase granite. Chemical analyses show the main and late phase magmas, including late dykes, were very similar, with repetition of the same fractionation except that the late phase magmas were drier and more quickly cooled, giving finer grained rocks.
A new paradigm for granite generation
- Jean Louis Vigneresse
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- Journal:
- Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh: Earth Sciences / Volume 95 / Issue 1-2 / March 2004
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- 26 July 2007, pp. 11-22
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- March 2004
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Ideas about granite generation have evolved considerably during the past two decades. The present paper lists the ideas which were accepted and later modified concerning the processes acting during the four stages of granite generation: melting, melt segregation and ascent, and emplacement. The active role of the mantle constitutes a fifth stage.
Fluid-assisted melting, deduced from metamorphic observations, was used to explain granite and granulite formation. Water seepage into meta-sedimentary rocks can produce granitic melt by decreasing melting temperature. CO2 released by the mantle helps to transform rocks into granulites. However, dehydration melting is now considered to be the origin of most granitic melts, as confirmed by experimental melting. Hydrous minerals are involved, beginning with muscovites, followed by biotite at higher temperatures. At even deeper conditions, hornblende dehydration melting leads to calc-alkaline magmas.
Melt segregation was first attributed to compaction and gravity forces caused by the density contrast between melt and its matrix. This was found insufficient for magma segregation in the continental crust because magmas were transposed from mantle conditions (decompression melting) to crustal conditions (dehydration melting). Rheology of two-phase materials requires that melt segregation is discontinuous in time, occurring in successive bursts. Analogue and numerical models confirm the discontinuous melt segregation. Compaction and shear localisation interact non-linearly, so that melt segregates into tiny conduits. Melt segregation occurs at a low degree of melting.
Global diapiric ascent and fractional crystallisation in large convective batholiths have also been shown to be inadequate and at least partly erroneous. Diapiric ascent cannot overcome the crustal brittle-ductile transition. Fracture-induced ascent influences the neutral buoyancy level at which ascent should stop but does not. Non-random orientation of magma feeders within the ambient stress field indicates that deformation controls magma ascent.
Detailed gravity and structural analyses indicate that granite plutons are built from several magma injections, each of small size and with evolving chemical composition. Detailed mapping of the contact between successive magma batches documents either continuous feeding, leading to normal petrographic zoning, or over periods separated in time, commonly leading to reverse zoning. The local deformation field controls magma emplacement and influences the shape of plutons.
A typical source for granite magmas involves three components from the mantle, lower and intermediate crusts. The role of the mantle in driving and controlling essential crustal processes appears necessary in providing stress and heat, as well as specific episodes of time for granite generation. These mechanisms constitute a new paradigm for granite generation.
Crystallisation of fine- and coarse-grained A-type granite sheets of the Southern Oklahoma Aulacogen, U.S.A.
- John P. Hogan, M. Charles Gilbert, Jon D. Price
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- Journal:
- Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh: Earth Sciences / Volume 91 / Issue 1-2 / 2000
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- 03 November 2011, pp. 139-150
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- 2000
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A-type felsic magmatism associated with the Cambrian Southern Oklahoma Aulacogen began with eruption of voluminous rhyolite to form a thick volcanic carapace on top of an eroded layered mafic complex. This angular unconformity became a crustal magma trap and was the locus for emplacement of later subvolcanic plutons. Rising felsic magma batches ponding along this crustal magma trap crystallised first as fine-grained granite sheets and then subsequently as coarser-grained granite sheets. Aplite dykes, pegmatite dykes and porphyries are common within the younger coarser-grained granite sheets but rare to absent within the older fine-grained granite sheets. The older fine-grained granite sheets typically contain abundant granophyre.
The differences between fine-grained and coarse-grained granite sheets can largely be attributed to a progressive increase in the depth of the crustal magma trap as the aulacogen evolved. At low pressures (<200MPa) a small increase in the depth of emplacement results in a dramatic increase in the solubility of H2O in felsic magmas. This is a direct consequence of the shape of the H2O-saturated granite solidus. The effect of this slight increase in total pressure on the crystallisation of felsic magmas is to delay vapour saturation, increase the H2O content of the residual melt fractions and further depress the solidus temperature. Higher melt H2O contents, and an extended temperature range over which crystallisation can proceed, both favour crystallisation of coarser-grained granites. In addition, the potential for the development of late, H2O-rich, melt fractions is significantly enhanced. Upon reaching vapour saturation, these late melt fractions are likely to form porphyries, aplite dykes and pegmatite dykes.
For the Southern Oklahoma Aulacogen, the progressive increase in the depth of the crustal magma trap at the base of the volcanic pile appears to reflect thickening of the volcanic pile during rifting, but may also reflect emplacement of earlier granite sheets. Thus, the change in textural characteristics of granite sheets of the Wichita Granite Group may hold considerable promise as an avenue for further investigation in interpreting the history of this rifting event.