The High Pressure belt in the Grenville Province: architecture, timing, and exhumation

Abstract

We propose that the Grenvillian allochthonous terranes may be grouped into High Pressure (HP) and Low Pressure (LP) belts and examine the HP belt in detail in the western and central Grenville Province. The HP belt is developed in Paleo- and Mesoproterozoic rocks of the pre-Grenvillian Laurentian margin and characterized by Grenvillian eclogite and co-facial HP granulite in mafic rocks. Pressure–temperature (P–T) estimates for eclogite-facies conditions in well-preserved assemblages are about 1800 MPa and 850°C. In the central Grenville Province, HP rocks formed at ~1060–1040 Ma and underwent a single stage of unroofing with transport into the upper crust by ~1020 Ma, whereas farther west they underwent two stages of unroofing separated by penetrative mid-crustal recrystallization before transport to the upper crust at ~1020 Ma. Unroofing processes were comparable in the two areas, involving both thrusting and extensional faulting in an orogen propagating into its foreland by understacking. In detail, thrusting episodes preceded extension in the western Grenville Province, whereas in the central Grenville Province, they were coeval, resulting in unroofing by tectonic extrusion. In the central Grenville Province, the footwall ramp is well preserved, but any former ramp in the western Grenville Province was obliterated by later lower crustal extensional flow. Continuation of the HP belt into the eastern Grenville Province is not established, but likely on geological grounds. However, the pattern of deep crustal seismic reflection in the Lithoprobe Eastern Canadian Shield Onshore–Offshore Transect (ECSOOT) line contrasts with that father west, suggesting that, if present, the HP rocks were exhumed by a different mechanism.