Fan-shaped staurolite in the Bolton syncline, eastern Connecticut: evidence for porphyroblast rotation during growth

Fan‐shaped polycrystalline staurolite porphyroblasts, 3–4 cm in length and 0.5 cm in width, occur together with centimetre‐sized euhedral prismatic staurolite porphyroblasts in pelitic schists of the Littleton Formation on the western overturned limb of the Bolton syncline in eastern Connecticut. The fans consist of intergrown planar splays of 001] elongated prisms, which are crudely radial from a single apex. The apical angles of the radial groupings range up to 70°. The orientations of the individual staurolite prisms are related by a rigid rotation about an axis perpendicular to the fan plane. The zone axes 001] always lie in the plane of the fan. Although the angle between the 100] zone axes of the individual prisms is uniform in each fan, it ranges from +30° to ?30° in different fans. Internally, the fans display: (i) remnants of a passively captured S_i foliation defined by disc‐shaped quartz blebs (type 1 inclusions) and layers of very fine carbonaceous material and tabular ilmenite platelets; (ii) bent staurolite blades and undulose extinction along low‐angle (010) subgrain boundaries near the apex of the fans; (iii) wedge‐shaped dilatational zones containing equigranular inclusion‐free quartz, mica and staurolite, and (iv) growth‐related quartz inclusion trails roughly perpendicular to a crystal face (type 2 inclusions). The S_i inclusion trails are typically perpendicular to the fan surface, radiate parallel to the blades, and show little to no curvature except at the very edge of the fans where they abruptly curve through nearly 90° into parallelism with an external S_e foliation. Careful examination of the three‐dimensional geometry of fans based on U‐stage measurements, serial sections and two‐circle optical goniometric measurements permits a detailed reconstruction of their sequential development. The origin of a fan involves limited intracrystalline deformation and brittle crack dilation, spalling, rotation, and growth of small marginal fragments and of new staurolite along wedge‐shaped zones along the S_i inclusion surfaces. Fans preferentially develop in porphyroblasts in which S_i is subparallel to the 010 cleavage. These internal features reflect the rotation and deformation of a brittle porphyroblast relative to syn‐growth shear stresses.