Skarns at a peridotite contact, Neyriz, Iran: High-temperature melting and metamorphism in a forearc setting

Abstract

In the Neyriz area of southern Iran unusual skarns are found above serpentinised peridotites at the contact with crystalline limestones. They have been interpreted as the high-temperature product of intrusion by hot peridotite into limestones, as low-temperature rodingites (the product of calcium metasomatism associated with serpentinisation), or a fortuitous juxtaposition of unrelated rocks. Their age is not known. The skarns are wollastonite-pyroxene-calcite rocks in which dark green pyroxenes are fassaites with high Al, Fe and Ti with high Ca-Tschermak's components. The field relations, textures, mineral assemblages and compositions, and melt inclusions in wollastonite and fassaite indicate the skarns formed by melting at the contact between peridotites and limestones with retrograde reactions during cooling forming garnet and anorthite. There are uncertainties in temperature estimates since pressure, XCO2 and other compositional variables are unknown, but melting temperatures were likely to have been close to 1100°C with garnet formation at approximately 900°C. Later alteration of some skarns and formation of rodingites close to the limestone-peridotite contacts occurred during low-temperature Ca metasomatism, probably after emplacement of the ophiolite during Zagros collision. A hot intrusive origin for the skarns appears incompatible with an arc-related supra-subduction origin of the ophiolite inferred from geochemical studies, but recent work in eastern Indonesia shows that during late Neogene subduction rollback, melts formed above hot mantle that intruded highly extended continental crust in a forearc setting. The scale, timing and temperatures of melting and metamorphism are very similar to those of the Late Cretaceous Neyriz ophiolite.