Abstract
The Japanese ophiolites occur as nappes and melanges. Nappe-type ophiolites formed and were emplaced within 20-30 Ma in the Ordovician, Permian, and Jurassic-Cretaceous periods, corresponding to the circum-Pacific ophiolite pulses. The Paleozoic ophiolite nappes (Yakuno, Oeyama, Miyamori and others) are distributed in Honshu, while the Mesozoic ones (Horokanai, Poroshiri and others) are in Hokkaido. In southwestern Honshu, the Jurassic accretional complex is overthrust by the Permian Yakuno ophiolite which in turn is overridden by the Ordovician Oeyama ophiolite. This relationship is a mirror image of the superposing ophiolite nappes of corresponding ages in the Klamath Mountains. Downward (oceanward) younging of ophiolite nappes is a common feature on both sides of the Pacific.
The fragments in a melange-type ophiolite may span more than 100 Ma in age. Paleozoic-Mesozoic ophiolite melanges in Honshu (Omi, Kurosegawa, Mikabu, and Motai) and Hokkaido (Kamuikotan and Tokoro) are aill affected by high-pressure blueschist metamorphism, and some of them are overlain by nappe-type ophiolites. Cenozoic ophiolite melanges (Setogawa and Mineoka) occur in front of the Izu island arc which has collided with Japan since Miocene, but do not contain high-pressure metamorphic rocks.
The Japanese ophiolites show wide petrologic diversity. The residual mantle peridotite ranges from fertile lherzolite to highly depleted harzburgite. The mafic-ultramafic cumulates include plagioclase-type, clinopyroxenetype, and orthopyroxene-type. MORBs are dominant among Japanese ophiolitic basalts, but alkali basalts and picrites are common in melange-type ophiolites. The occurrence of highly depleted harzburgite which can not coexist with MORB, phlogopite-bearing harzburgite, and gabbros of arc tholeiite mineralogy indicates island-arc origin of some ophiolites. Most of Japanese nappe-type ophiolites may be fragments of ancient oceanic crust-mantle forming island arc-marginal basin systems, and the melange-type ophiolites may represent underlying subduction zone, in which subducting MORB crust-mantle, seamounts and oceanic arc volcanoes were crushed and mixed-up.itself, and the ophiolitic nappes represent hanging wall of the subduction zone, i.e. crust-mantle section of the island arc-marginal basin system.
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Ishiwatari, A. (1991). Time-Space Distribution and Petrologic Diversity of Japanese Ophiolites. In: Peters, T., Nicolas, A., Coleman, R.G. (eds) Ophiolite Genesis and Evolution of the Oceanic Lithosphere. Petrology and Structural Geology, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3358-6_37
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