Petrology, geochemistry, Ar[sbnd]Ar isotopes of an arc related calk-alkaline pluton from Mamb (Pan-African Yaounde group, Cameroon): A testimony to the subduction of a hot oceanic crust

Abstract

In Central Africa, the Pan-African Yaoundé group is made up of migmatites and gneisses exhumed and thrusted on micaschists. In a window in the micaschists, the Mamb metagabbro massif occurs as km-size and ca 20 m-high hill crosscut by a 15 m-thick dyke of meta-hornblendite. Minor facies are biotitites, garnetites, and granitic veins. Metagabbro comprises pargasite, biotite, labrador-andesine, pyrope- andradite- grossular-rich almandine, epidote, FeTi oxide, quartz, scapolite, rutile, zircon, and late metamorphic muscovite, whereas meta-hornblendite is made up of abundant edenite-pargasite, and minor amounts of plagioclase, biotite and epidote. Textural features such as epidote needles in plagioclase and rutile exsolutions in amphibole suggests that metamorphism (P-T conditions: 610 °C and 9.1 Kb) post-dated magma emplacement and crystallisation. Based on 40Ar/39Ar thermochronology of amphibole and micas, the proceedings of metamorphic processes extended from 601 to 586 Ma. Chemically, metagabbros and meta-hornblendites display hybrid adakitic and calk-alkaline characteristics. Mantle-normalised element patterns of metagabbros are marked by negative Nb, Ta, Zr, Hf, Ti, Y and positive Sr and Pb anomalies parallel to metadiorites of Yaoundé. Meta-hornblendite patterns show depletion in Th, K, and Pb similarly to alkaline rocks but high values of Y/Nb (> 3) and Zr/Nb (11–52) ratios point to a subalkalic affinity. Characteristics of these metagabbros and meta-hornblendites point to heterogeneous origins by partial melting of a dehydrated subducted hot oceanic crust and the fusion of a metasomatised mantle wedge. Metadiorites from Yaoundé are arc related rocks. Thus it appears that the island arc setting described at Boumnyebel extends eastwards up to Yaoundé, and probably up to Lomié in the south-eastern Cameroon. The northwards extension of this setting is yet to be established taking into account the presence of Archaean-Paleoproterozoic formations north of the continental scale Sanaga shear zone. At the regional scale, the best model to explain the presence of adakites and classic arc magmas at Mamb, Bape, Bangangté and Fomopea is a south-north subduction of the Pan-African Yaoundé hot oceanic crust under the Archaean Adamawa-Yade block.