An Archean metamorphic core complex in the southern Slave Province: basement–cover structural relations between the Sleepy Dragon Complex and the Yellowknife Supergroup

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Archean rocks in the Fenton Lake – Brown Lake area, southern Slave Province, are subdivided into two lithotectonic domains: a supracrustal domain, which consists mainly of the Archean Yellowknife Supergroup, and a gneiss–granite domain. The latter is composed of gneissic and metaigneous rocks of the Sleepy Dragon Complex, determined to be basement to the Yellowknife Supergroup, and granite plutons, including the 2641 ± 3.5 Ma Suse Lake granite and the 2583.5 ± 1 Ma Morose Granite. Volcanic rocks of the Cameron River Belt and greywacke–mudstone turbiditic metasedimentary rocks of the Burwash Formation constitute the supracrustal domain.A late Archean, amphibolite- to greenschist-facies, ductile to local brittle, high-strain zone separates the domains. Kinematic indicators demonstrate that the zone experienced two kinematically opposed episodes of displacement. The older episode involved pre- to synthermal peak thrusting of the supracrustal rocks over the gneiss–granite domain. Thrusting is kinematically and temporally consistent with late Archean, pre- to synthermal peak, regional contractional deformation. Structural and metamorphic relations and kinematic indicators suggest that thrusting and regional contraction were followed shortly by intrusion of the peraluminous Morose Granite and thereafter by a late syn- to post-thermal peak episode of extension, resulting in tectonic unroofing of the gneiss–granite domain.The sequential history of contraction and attendant regional metamorphism, granite intrusion, and, ultimately, extensional collapse, which is documented in the Archean rocks in the area, is a common feature of Phanerozoic collisional orogens. Moreover, the tectonic history of the gneiss–granite domain is broadly similar to the evolution of metamorphic core complexes in the North American Cordillera.