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Wollastonite at Nuliyam, Kerala, southern India: a reassessment of CO2-infiltration and charnockite formation at a classic locality

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Abstract

The occurrence of a charnockitised felsic gneiss adjacent to a marble/calc-silicate horizon at Nuliyam, southern India, has been cited in recent literature as a classic example of the dehydration of crustal rocks resulting from the advective infiltration of CO2-rich fluids generated from a local carbonate source. Petrographic study of the Nuliyam calc-silicate, however, reveals it to consist of abundant wollastonite and scapolite and contain locally discordant veins rich in wollastonite. At the pressure—temperature conditions proposed for charnockite formation in recent studies, 5 kbar and 725°C, this wollastonite-bearing mineral assemblage was stable in the presence of a fluid phase only if X CO2 was near 0.25 and could not have coexisted with the fluid causing biotite breakdown and charnockite development in adjacent rocks (X CO2>0.85). The stable coexistence of wollastonite and scapolite prohibits the calc-silicate from being a source for fluid driving charnockitisation at the required P-T conditions. Textural observations such as the limited replacement of wollastonite by calcite+quartz symplectites and mosaics, are consistent with late fluid infiltration into the calc-silicate. The extensive isotopic, chemical and mineral abundance data of Jackson and Santosh (1992) are re-interpreted and integrated with these observations to develop a model involving the infiltration of an externally derived CO2-rich fluid during high-temperature decompression. Increased charnockite development next to the calc-silicate has arisen because the calc-silicate acted as a relatively unreactive and impermeable barrier to fluid transport and caused fluid ponding beneath antiformal closures. The Nuliyam charnockite/calc-silicate locality is an example of a “structural trap” in a metamorphic setting rather than a site where charnockite formation can be attributed to local fluid sources.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geology and Geophysics, The University of Edinburgh, Kings Buildings, West Mains Road, EH9 3JW, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

    Simon L. Harley

  2. Centre for Earth Science Studies, Akkulam, Thurvikkal Post, P.B. 7250, 695 031, Trivandrum, Kerala, India

    M. Santosh

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Harley, S.L., Santosh, M. Wollastonite at Nuliyam, Kerala, southern India: a reassessment of CO2-infiltration and charnockite formation at a classic locality. Contr. Mineral. and Petrol. 120, 83–94 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00311009

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