Variation of Ti-in-quartz in gneiss domes exposing the world's youngest ultrahigh-pressure rocks, D'Entrecasteaux Islands, Papua New Guinea

Korchinski, Megan, Little, Timothy A., Smith, Euan and Millet, Marc-Alban ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2710-5374 2012. Variation of Ti-in-quartz in gneiss domes exposing the world's youngest ultrahigh-pressure rocks, D'Entrecasteaux Islands, Papua New Guinea. Geochemistry Geophysics Geosystems 13 (10) , Q0AL01. 10.1029/2012GC004230

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

The D'Entrecasteaux Island gneiss domes, Papua New Guinea, expose the world's youngest ultrahigh-pressure rocks (5–8 Ma), which were exhumed nearly isothermally to the mid-crust at rates of cm yr−1. Because quartz grains are internally distorted by deformation bands and have strongly interlobate grain boundary microstructures indicative of rapid grain-boundary migration, we infer that Ti content in the quartz was frozen in by dynamic recrystallization that accompanied the continued deformation of the gneisses as they were exhumed through the crust toward the surface. We infer that average Ti content of an assemblage of quartz grains in a sample depends on the ratio of cooling rate to dynamic recrystallization rate. An increase in the former preserves and captures a larger fraction of relatively high-Ti, high-temperature grains, whereas an increase in the latter removes such relict grains and replaces them with a newer set of lower-Ti, low-temperature recrystallized grains. Based on this concept, we use Ti-in-quartz as a tool to infer domains of differing relative cooling rate across four D'Entrecasteaux Island domes. Ti concentrations in quartz grains from 89 samples of quartzofeldspathic gneiss and eclogite increase inwardly away from the dome margins (2.5–20 ppm) toward the center of the domes (20–>100 ppm). From this, we infer that the most rapidly cooled rocks were exhumed near the center of the domes. Our data reinforces structurally based arguments that the symmetric domes were emplaced vertically into the crust as diapirs, rather than laterally exhumed as a result of large-magnitude slip on dome-bounding detachment faults.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Earth and Environmental Sciences
Subjects:	Q Science > QE Geology
Publisher:	American Geophysical Union.
ISSN:	1525-2027
Last Modified:	01 Nov 2022 10:56
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/93317

Citation Data

Cited 11 times in Scopus. View in Scopus. Powered By Scopus® Data

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item