Abstract
Abstract Located in the foreland domain of the Alpine and Pyrenean mountain belts, the French Massif Central presents enigmatic topographic features—reaching elevations of ∼1700 m above sea level and ∼1000 m of relief—that did not originate from Alpine compressional nor from extensional tectonics. Similar to other Variscan domains in Europe, such as the Bohemian, Rhenish, and Vosges/Black Forest Massifs, a Cenozoic uplift has been postulated, although its timing and quantification remain largely unconstrained. With respect to the other Variscan Massifs, the French Massif Central is wider and higher and shows a more intense late Cenozoic volcanism, suggesting that deep-seated processes have been more intense. In this study, apatite fission-track and (U-Th)/He thermochronometry were applied to investigate the long-term topographic evolution of the Massif Central. Our new thermochronological data come from the eastern flank of the massif, where sampling profiles ran from the high-elevation region down to the Rhône River valley floor with a total elevation profile of 1200 m. Age-elevation relationships, mean track-length distributions, and thermal modeling indicate a two-step cooling history: (1) a first exhumation event, already detected through previously published thermochronology data, with an onset time during the Cretaceous, and (2) a more recent Cenozoic phase that is resolved from our data, with a likely post-Eocene onset. This second erosional event is associated with relief formation and valley incision possibly induced by a long-wavelength domal uplift supported by mantle upwelling.
Highlights
Many mountain belts on Earth are not associated with convergent domains and crustal shortening
The French Massif Central is not unique, and other portions of the Variscan belt in Central Europe exhibit a present-day high topography associated with a potential Cenozoic rejuvenation
Comparing our new data set with the published data set of Barbarand et al (2001) and Gautheron et al (2009), we found some common features that we consider essential for the interpretation of the eastern margin evolution: (1) Uppermost samples show Cretaceous apatite fission-track (AFT) and AHe ages and long mean track length (MTL) (>13 μm); (2) a complex Cenozoic thermal history is suggested by the inverse modeling for the lowermost samples; (3) MTL-elevation relationships show a complex and nonlinear trend; and (4) large
Summary
Many mountain belts on Earth are not associated with convergent domains and crustal shortening. The Massif Central in France is a striking example of such a nonconvergent mountain; it is located outside of the European-African plate boundary and was not Valerio Olivetti http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8173 -3860 involved in its Cenozoic convergence It is at present day a prominent topographic feature reaching up to 1700 m above sea level (asl; Fig. 1) with a low-relief and high-elevation landscape bordered by incised fluvial valleys The French Massif Central is not unique, and other portions of the Variscan belt in Central Europe exhibit a present-day high topography associated with a potential Cenozoic rejuvenation For these massifs, the common proposed uplift phases are interpreted to have been mainly controlled by the far-field effect of the Europa-Africa convergence, such as a shortening event during the Late Cretaceous–Paleocene and Eocene–Miocene intracontinental rifting (Ziegler, 1994; Kley and Voigt, 2008). This event occurred with different timing and amplitude, suggesting a complex regional variability that reflects the complexity of the European geodynamic setting
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