High-pressure granulites of the Podolsko complex, Bohemian Massif: An example of crustal rocks that were subducted to mantle depths and survived a pervasive mid-crustal high-temperature overprint
Abstract
This study exaThis study examines metamorphic history of mafic and felsic granulites that occur in this complex as minor lenses or layers hosted in pervasively anatectic rocks. The mafic granulite contains garnet with preserved high-Ca cores, which based on pseudosection modelling indicates pressure conditions near the coesite stability field at temperatures of ca. 550-600 degrees C.
The relicts of an earlier eclogite-facies stage have been overprinted by a later granulite-facies assemblage consisting of ternary feldspar, orthopyroxene, and spinel in the mafic granulite and sillimanite and spinel in the felsic granulite. Composition of younger garnet (in rims and as smaller grains) in both granulites suggests that a near isothermal decompression of these rocks was followed by heating that reached temperature of ca. 900 degrees C at pressure of ca. 0.5 GPa.
It is thus concluded that the granulites underwent at least two temporally separate tectonometamorphic events: they were first subducted to mantle depths and exhumed rapidly at relatively low temperatures and then near isobarically heated at mid-crustal levels. The preservation of earlier eclogite-facies garnet in the mafic granulite indicates that the latter event was short-lived and was followed by near isobaric cooling.
The geologically brief granulite-facies metamorphism was previously explained as a result of slab break-off and mantle upwelling after the main phase of microplate convergence in the Bohemian Massif. To put the Podolsko complex into a broader tectonic context, we synthesize the available petrologic and structural data from the correlative (U)HP assemblages of the Moldanubian Zone to suggest that they typically do not preserve structural record of the subduction stage, only rarely preserve an early exhumation phase to the middle crust, and most, if not all, have been extensively overprinted by late-stage processes at shallower crustal levels.