A suture related accretionary wedge in the Gondwana assembly: Insights from serpentinites in the Hoggar shield, Algeria

Abstract

The assembly of West Gondwana supercontinent involved several complex processes that led to the formation of the Hoggar shield during the Panafrican-Brasiliano event. We present the first petro-geochemical, geochronological and field data of serpentinite lenses exposed along the In-Tedeini domain, within deformed talc-schist and magmatic-sedimentary formations. The serpentinites preserved the main characteristics of their parent peridotites (Al/Si: 0.004–0.03; Mg/Si: 1.14–1.62; Al2O3: 0.15–1.37 wt%; Mg#: 85.3–94; Ti: 9.34–120 ppm; Nb: 0.007–0.46 ppm), attesting to a highly depleted mantle wedge protolith involved in a subduction zone. This is in agreement with the high Cr# (0.55–0.6), low to moderate Mg# (0.36–0.65) and low TiO2 contents (<0.1 wt%) of their constitutive Cr-spinels. Geochemical modelling suggest that both the North and South In-Tedeini serpentinite units have experienced intense and similar fluid-induced dynamic melting episodes. The evolution of these two units has diverged, with the Southern In-Tedeini unit being refertilized by a small volume of island-arc basaltic melts generated in the mantle wedge. Serpentinization of these rocks probably occurred under static conditions at high temperature corresponding essentially to amphibolite-facies conditions. Field relations suggest that the exhumation of the massive serpentinites occurred along major sinistral shear zones steeply dipping eastward, assisted by talc-schists that highly localized transpressive deformation. First U-Pb zircon ages obtained from a metasomatic chloritite in North In-Tedeini serpentinites; they may have recorded the age (770 ± 5 Ma) of the subduction related Panafrican island arcs and the emplacement (631 ± 10 Ma) of In-Tedeini serpentinites within the crust; or they may rather correspond to the serpentinization events endured by the rocks. All together, the reported results support the presence of a major suture zone, oriented NNW-SSE. This suture is outlined by mantle serpentinite lenses exhumed in a collisional accretionary wedge, which connects the western and the central Hoggar, following a Panafrican east-dipping subduction. This tectonic system would have contributed to the closure of the Goiás-Pharusian ocean.