Coesite-bearing eclogite breccia: implication for coseismic ultrahigh-pressure metamorphism and the rate of the process

Abstract

A coesite-bearing eclogite breccia is reported here for the first time at Yangkou in the Chinese Su–Lu ultrahigh-pressure (UHP) metamorphic belt. It is thrusted over a coesite-bearing coronitic eclogite and is gradational to a foliated eclogite at the contact. The coronitic eclogite is characterized by garnet coronas between fine-grained high-pressure mineral aggregates forming pseudomorphs after plagioclase, ilmenite, biotite, and pyroxene in a gabbroic protolith. The breccia consists of fine-grained cataclastic eclogite fragments (garnet + omphacite + coesite/quartz ± phengite ± kyanite) and a coarser-grained matrix schist (garnet + quartz + phengite + kyanite). The foliated eclogite consists of intercalating bands of the cataclastic eclogite and a schist similar to the fragments and the matrix, respectively, in the breccia. The igneous fabric of the eclogitized gabbro is increasingly obliterated from the coronitic eclogite through the foliated eclogite to the breccia. Micropoikilitic amoeboid garnet containing numerous inclusions of omphacite and other high-pressure minerals is characteristic of eclogite facies pseudotachylytes and suggests flash melting and rapid crystallization. In the breccia and foliated eclogite, quartz + K-feldspar ± albite aggregates are included in garnet or form strings cutting across the cataclasites. In some aggregates, quartz grains are cemented by K-feldspar and vesicular albite, also implying crystallization from melts in a rapid cooling and decompression process from the UHP condition. The field context, the locally preserved igneous fabric in the breccia, the similar whole-rock compositions, as well as the complementary mineral assemblages in the fragments and the matrix with respect to the coronitic eclogite, suggest that the breccia was formed by cataclasis and segregation of minerals in a former coronitic eclogite in response to a sudden pressure release. Intergranular coesite is found only in the eclogite cataclasites and may have survived via the rapid cooling event, as coesite converts to quartz completely in a few years when being cooled slowly at lower pressures. Such rate information is incompatible with the presumed deep subduction/exhumation process but implies transient UHP metamorphism coeval with the seismic event.