| Abstract: | Ophiolites in different tectonic settings are underlain and overlain by characteristic rock units which bear similar relationships to each other and to the ophiolite. Consideration of these relationships in three settings, an active arc (Burma), a continental margin (Oman) and an island ridge-basin system (Cyprus) suggests that in all three settings they resulted from ophiolite detachment at a spreading ridge in a narrow oceanic basin with passive margins. In Burma and possibly in Oman and Cyprus, detachment was related to regional compressive stress associated with an earlier collision. Following detachment and loss of the spreading system, perhaps accompanied by deposition of stratiform sulphides, the rock relationships can be explained by subduction of the remnant oceanic basin beneath the ophiolite forming an island arc, accretion of continent-derived turbidites in front of and beneath the ophiolite, and collision of the ophiolite and overlying volcanic arc with a passive continental margin. Subsequent collision-related events include emplacement of serpentinite diapirs, rise of mud matrix melange and its extrusion as debris flows, elevation of a foreland ridge, and subsidence of a basin on the internal side of the ridge. In Taiwan, olistostromes with local ophiolite clasts in the Lichi mélange could be explained as debris flows of extruded mud-matrix mélange diapirs, generated by tectonic burial of wet sediments during collision-related back-thrusting. |
