Extension of the Mid- to Lower Crust with Orogenic Inheritance: Examples from the Death Valley Region (Western US), and the Mauleon Basin (Southwestern France).

Abstract:

Continental margins exhibit a range of widths and symmetries defined by the strain patterns that arise during extension and rifting. An important pattern in this respect is the early localization of extension into necking zones. The rheology of the lower crust plays a large role in this localization, and can be affected by inherited orogenic structures, fabrics, and mineral assemblages. Here, we further evaluate the role of orogenic fabrics in continental extension using microstructural observations and thermodynamic modeling of geological sections exposed in the Funeral and Black Mountains of the Death Valley region, California, and from the Mauleon Basin, France. The Death Valley region sits within the Basin-and-Range region of broadly distributed Cenozoic extension, over a relatively flat and deep moho. In contrast, in the Mauleon basin, Cretaceous extension accommodated mantle exhumation, and was strongly localized in older Hercynian orogenic crust. In both areas, mid- to lower crustal rocks are characterized by inherited migmatitic fabrics overprinted by zones of localized, extensional fabrics. Mineral assemblages that formed over a P-T cooling path define the fabrics in each field area. The high-temperature fabrics record decompression-melting due to late- to post-orogenic collapse. Yet, the two field areas show contrasting retrograde assemblages, which are hypothesized to have resulted from changes in the local effective bulk composition produced by differences in melt segregation. At subsequent extensional stages, mid- to lower crustal deformation resulted in the transposition of the inherited post-orogenic fabrics, documented with quartz fabric analysis (including EBSD). The two contrasting regions show how the rheology of inherited orogenic lower crust responds to differences in melt-segregation and metamorphic histories, potentially controlling margin structural evolution.