Arrested charnockite formation at Kottavattam, southern India

Abstract At Kottavattam, southern Kerala (India), late Proterozoic homogeneous leptynitic garnet–biotite gneisses of granitic composition have been transformed on a decimetric scale into coarse-grained massive charnockite sensu stricto along a set of conjugate fractures transecting the gneissic foliation. Charnockitization post-dates the polyphase deformation, regional high-grade metamorphism and anatexis, and evidently occurred at a late stage of the Pan-African tectonothermal history. Geothermobarometric and fluid inclusion data document textural and chemical equilibration of the gneiss and charnockite assemblages at similar P_lith–T conditions (650–700°C, 5–6 kbar) in the presence of carbonic fluids internally buffered by reaction with graphite and opaque mineral phases (X_CO2= 0.7–0.6; X_H2O= 0.2–0.3; X_N2= 0.1; log f_O2= -17.5). Mineralogical zonation indicates that charnockitization of the leptynitic gneiss involved first the breakdown of biotite and oxidation of graphite in narrow, outward-migrating transition zones adjacent to the gneiss, followed by the breakdown of garnet and the neoblastesis of hypersthene in the central charnockite zone. Compared to the host gneiss, the charnockite shows higher concentrations of K, Na, Sr, Ba and Zn and lower concentrations of Mg, Fe, Ti, V, Y, Zr and the HREE, with a complementary pattern in the narrow transition zones of biotite breakdown. The P_lith–T–X_H2O data and chemical zonation patterns indicate charnockitization through subsolidus-dehydration reaction in an open system. Subsequent residence of the carbonic fluids in the charnockite resulted in low-grade alteration causing modification of the syn-charnockitic elemental distribution patterns and the properties of entrapped fluids. We favour an internally controlled process of arrested charnockitization in which, during near-isothermal uplift, the release of carbonic fluids from decrepitating inclusions in the host gneiss into simultaneously developing fracture zones led to a change in the fluid regime from ‘fluid-absent’in the gneiss to ‘fluid-present’in the fracture zones and to the development of an initial fluid-pressure gradient, triggering the dehydration reaction.