High-temperature 'clockwise'P-T paths and melting in the development of regional migmatites: an example from southern Brittany, France

The Southern Brittany Migmatite Belt (SBMB), which evolved through the metamorphic peak between c. 400 Ma and c. . 370 Ma ago, consists of a heterogeneous suite of high-grade gneisses and anatectic migmatites, both metatexites and diatexites. Rare garnet-cordierite gneiss layers record evidence of an early prograde P-T path. In these rocks, growth-zoned garnet cores and a sequence of included mineral assemblages in garnet, from core to rim, of Qtz + Ilm + Ky, Pl + Ky + St + Rt + Bt and Pl + Sil + St + Rt + Bt constrain a prograde evolution during which the reactions Ilm + Ky + Qtz→ Aim + Rt, Ms + Chl→ St + Bt + Qtz + V and St + Qtz→ Grt + Sil + V were crossed. Parts of this prograde evolution are preserved as inclusion assemblages in garnet in all other rock types. In all rock types, garnet has reverse zoned rims, and garnet replacement by cordierite and/or biotite and plagioclase suggests the following reactions have occurred: Grt + Sil + Qtz→ Crd → Hc ± Ilm, Bt + Sil + Qtz → Crd ± Hc → Ilm → Kfs + V and (Na + Ca + K + Ti) + Grt → Bt + Pl + Qtz. Microstructural analysis of reaction textures in conjunction with a petrogenetic grid has enabled the construction of a tightly constrained 'clockwise' P–T path for the SBMB. The high-temperature part of the path has a steep dT/dP slope characteristic of near isothermal decompression. It is proposed that the P-T path followed by the SBMB is the result of the inversion, by overthrusting, of a back-arc basin and that such a tectonic setting may be applicable to other high-temperature migmatite terranes. The near isothermal decompression is at least partly driven by the upward (diapiric) movement of the diatexite/anatectic granite core of the SBMB.