Country‐rock structural fabrics as a guide to pluton emplacement depth: An example from the Hodgkinson Province,northeastern Australia

Country‐rock structures adjacent to plutons of the linear, northwest‐southeast‐trending Mt Alto Supersuite, Hodgkinson Province, northeastern Australia, are variably developed from north to south along the belt. S₃ and S₄ cleavages show close temporal relationships with pluton emplacement and are better and more widely developed around plutons in the north, whereas much weaker cleavages of the same generation are only sporadically developed to the south. Cleavage trend lines anastomose around less elongate plutons to the north but are generally truncated by more elongate plutons to the south. It is proposed that a major crustal dislocation, the Alto Fault Zone, comprises a set of subparallel structures that formed prior to granite intrusion and controlled emplacement of some plutons and their final shapes. The north‐south variation in structural relations is interpreted to reflect a corresponding variation in depth of emplacement from north to south, which resulted when post‐emplacement reactivation of the Alto Fault Zone uplifted and sinistrally displaced the northern end of the supersuite relative to the southern end. Reactivation of the fault zone after granite emplacement is supported by the truncation of some plutons.