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Kyanite-bearing rocks from the Hackett River area, N.W.T.: Implications for Archean geothermal gradients

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Abstract

The increase in metamorphic grade toward the Hackett River gneiss dome indicates that the structural dome is also a metamorphic culmination. In pelitic rocks east of the dome, the prograde sequence is chlorite, biotite, staurolite-cordierite, sillimanite. To the southwest the sequence is andalusite-staurolite-cordierite, sillimanite. In quartzofeldspathic gneisses which are closer to the dome than the sillimanite isograd, kyanite occurs as corroded relics, cross-cut by sillimanite and rimmed by cordierite and plagioclase.

The pelites were metamorphosed under regional low-pressure conditions at the same time the quartzo-feldspathic rocks underwent higher-pressure metamorphism. A lateral variation in geothermal gradient during metamorphism is postulated to account for the change in facies-series. High heat flow beneath oceanic crust produced the low-pressure assemblages in the pelites; higher-pressure assemblages formed in a region of suppressed isotherms around a relatively cool, proto-continental trondhjemitic body. Low-pressure conditions were imposed on the kyanite-bearing gneisses during continuing metamorphism and diapiric uplift.

Spatial association of late Archean kyanite-bearing rocks with early Archean sodic proto-cratons has also been noted in the Churchill and Superior Provinces of Canada as well as the Rhodesian Craton.

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  1. Department of Geological Sciences, Queen's University, K7L 3N6, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

    John A. Percival

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Percival, J.A. Kyanite-bearing rocks from the Hackett River area, N.W.T.: Implications for Archean geothermal gradients. Contr. Mineral. and Petrol. 69, 177–184 (1979). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00371860

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