Full Title: Origin and Evolution of Precambrian High-Grade Gneiss Terranes, with Special Emphasis on the Limpopo Complex of Southern Africa
Editors: Dirk D. van Reenen, Jan D. Kramers, Stephen McCourt, and Leonid L. Perchuk
Many early Precambrian high-grade metamorphic provinces differ subtly from more recent ones, with higher temperatures at shallower depth in the crust. This may in part be attributed to higher crustal heat production. The question of what else might have been different presents a challenge, as the control “everything else being equal” is removed from the experiment. The first section of Memoir 207 deals with mineralogic and petrologic aspects of high-grade metamorphism, including melting and the nature of fluids. Chapters 6 to 13 focus on the Limpopo Complex of southern Africa, with case studies and reviews of its geochronology and crustal evolution, and of the regional structural and burial-exhumation history. Problems of unraveling the effects of successive tectonometamorphic events in a polymetamorphic province are addressed from the geochronologic and the petrologic perspectives. The last two chapters include numerical simulations of lower crustal diapirism in high-grade metamorphism, and a review of tectonic models for the Limpopo Complex. This well-rounded book is relevant to the big question of uniformitarianism in plate tectonics and its effects.
Published: 2/14/2011
ISBN Number: 9780813712079
Pages: 324
Product Category: Memoirs