Progressive Regional Metamorphism in Southern New Zealand

Abstract

During the past ten years a number of papers dealing with progressive regional metamorphism in the southern portion of New Zealand have been published. In the following pages a brief summary of the assemblages of minerals typical of the various metamorphic zones is given, but the writer's main object is to draw attention to certain mineralogical and structural peculiarities that appear to differ in some degree from what are usually regarded as the normal features of regional metamorphism in such classic areas as the Scottish Highlands and the Caledonian chain of Norway. The possibility that such departures from the normal may in some instances be connected with chemical peculiarities in the parent rock is suggested by such phenomena as the well-known general limitation of chloritoid, staurolite, and low-grade garnets to pelitic rocks of special chemical compositions. Other unusual features, especially when found to recur in widely separated regions, may well be governed by some particular combination of physical rather than chemical conditions.