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A geothermobarometric investigation of garnet peridotites in the Western Gneiss Region of Norway

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Abstract

In the Western Gneiss Region of Norway are found numerous peridotite lenses which have been extensively recrystallized under amphibolite fades conditions during the Caledonian Orogeny. However, evidence for an earlier Caledonian high-pressure metamorphism has been recorded by abundant eclogite and granulite relicts within gneiss and by the presence of at least ten garnet perioditite bodies preserved within chlorite peridotites. Two garnet-bearing ultramafic assemblages have been recognized: olivine-orthopyroxene-clinopyroxene-garnet and olivine-ortho-pyroxene-pargasitic-amphibole-garnet.

Except for olivine, minerals in the garnet peridotites are compositionally zoned, with relatively uniform cores and compositional gradients generally confined to the outer 200 micrometers, or less, of grains. The most common zoning patterns at grain margins are an increase in Fe/Mg in garnet, an increase in Al2O3 in orthopyroxene, and a decrease in Na2O and Al2O3 in clinopyroxene, although there are exceptions to these patterns at two localities. These zoning patterns have developed mainly in response to cooling and decompression of the garnet peridotites.

Application of geothermometers and barometers to the garnet peridotites has yielded temperatures of 770–860° C and pressures of 30–43 kb for cores of grains and consistently lower temperatures and pressures for rims, except for peridotites on Oterøy, where there is an apparent temperature increase from cores to rims.

The petrologic and geothermobarometric evidence for most of the investigated garnet peridotites is compatible with their tectonic emplacement from the upper mantle into thickened continental crust during Caledonian collision of the Baltic and Greenland plates.

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  1. Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, USA

    L. G. Medaris Jr.

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Medaris, L.G. A geothermobarometric investigation of garnet peridotites in the Western Gneiss Region of Norway. Contr. Mineral. and Petrol. 87, 72–86 (1984). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00371404

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