Eocene magmatism in the Himalaya: response to lithospheric flexure during early Indian collision?

Ma, Lin, Wang, Qiang, Kerr, Andrew ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5569-4730, Li, Zheng-Xiang, Dan, Wei, Yang, Ya-Nan, Zhou, Jin-Sheng and Li, Cheng 2023. Eocene magmatism in the Himalaya: response to lithospheric flexure during early Indian collision? Geology 51 (1) , pp. 96-100. 10.1130/G50438.1

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Abstract

Eocene mafic magmatism in the Himalaya provides a crucial window for probing the evolution of crustal anatexis processes within the lower plate in a collisional orogen. We report geochemical data from the earliest postcollision ocean-island basalt–like mafic dikes intruding the Tethyan Himalaya near the northern edge of the colliding Indian plate. These dikes occurred coeval, and spatially overlap, with Eocene granitoids in the cores of gneiss domes and were likely derived from interaction between melts from the lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary and the Indian continental lithosphere. We propose that these mafic magmas were emplaced along lithospheric fractures in response to lithospheric flexure during initial subduction of the Indian continent and that the underplating of such mafic magmas resulted in orogen-parallel crustal anatexis within the Indian continent. This mechanism can explain the formation of coeval magmatism and the geologic evolution of a collisional orogen on both sides of the suture zone.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Earth and Environmental Sciences
Publisher:	Geological Society of America
ISSN:	1943-2682
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	14 October 2022
Date of Acceptance:	9 September 2022
Last Modified:	08 Feb 2023 18:20
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/153391

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