The Grenville Orogen in North America is interpreted to have resulted from collision between Laurentia and another continent, probably Amazonia, at ca. 1100 Ma. The exposed segment of the orogen was derived largely from reworked Archean to Paleoproterozoic Laurentian crust, products of a long-lived Mesoproterozoic continental-margin arc and associated back arc, and remnants of one or more accreted mid-Mesoproterozoic island-arc terranes. A potential suture, preserved in Grenvillian inliers of the southeastern USA, may separate rocks of Laurentian and Amazonian affinities. The Grenvillian Orogeny lasted more than 100 million years. Much of the interior Grenville Province, with peak metamorphism at ca. 1090–1020 Ma, consists of uppermost amphibolite- to granulite-facies rocks metamorphosed at depths of ca. 30 km, but areas of lower crustal, eclogite-facies nappes metamorphosed at 50–60 km depth also occur and an orogenic lid that largely escaped Grenvillian metamorphism is preserved locally. Overall, deformation and regional metamorphism migrated sequentially to the northwest into the Laurentian craton, with the youngest contractional structures in the northwestern part of the orogen at ca. 1000–980 Ma. The North American lithospheric root extends across part of the Grenville Orogen, where it may have been produced by depletion of sub-continental lithospheric mantle beneath the long-lived Laurentian-margin Mesoproterozoic subduction zone. Both the Grenville Orogen and the Himalaya–Tibet Orogen have northern margins characterized by long-lived subduction before continental collision and protracted convergence following collision. Both exhibit cratonward-propagating thrusting. In the Himalaya–Tibet Orogen, however, the pre-collisional Eurasian-margin arc is high in the structural stack, whereas in the Grenville Orogen, the pre-collisional continental-margin arc is low in the structural stack. We interpret this difference as due to subduction reversal in the Grenville case shortly before collision, so that the continental-margin arc became the lower plate during the ensuing orogeny. The structurally low position of the warm, extended Laurentian crust probably contributed significantly to the ductility of lower and mid-crustal Grenvillian rocks.

We propose that the Grenvillian allochthonous terranes may be grouped into High Pressure (HP) and Low Pressure (LP) belts and examine the HP belt in detail in the western and central Grenville Province. The HP belt is developed in Paleo- and Mesoproterozoic rocks of the pre-Grenvillian Laurentian margin and characterized by Grenvillian eclogite and co-facial HP granulite in mafic rocks. Pressure–temperature (P–T) estimates for eclogite-facies conditions in well-preserved assemblages are about 1800 MPa and 850°C. In the central Grenville Province, HP rocks formed at ~1060–1040 Ma and underwent a single stage of unroofing with transport into the upper crust by ~1020 Ma, whereas farther west they underwent two stages of unroofing separated by penetrative mid-crustal recrystallization before transport to the upper crust at ~1020 Ma. Unroofing processes were comparable in the two areas, involving both thrusting and extensional faulting in an orogen propagating into its foreland by understacking. In detail, thrusting episodes preceded extension in the western Grenville Province, whereas in the central Grenville Province, they were coeval, resulting in unroofing by tectonic extrusion. In the central Grenville Province, the footwall ramp is well preserved, but any former ramp in the western Grenville Province was obliterated by later lower crustal extensional flow. Continuation of the HP belt into the eastern Grenville Province is not established, but likely on geological grounds. However, the pattern of deep crustal seismic reflection in the Lithoprobe Eastern Canadian Shield Onshore–Offshore Transect (ECSOOT) line contrasts with that father west, suggesting that, if present, the HP rocks were exhumed by a different mechanism.

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Partitioning of Fe and Mg between garnet and phengitic muscovite was calibrated as a geothermometer by Green & Hellman (1982) using experimental data at 2S30 kbar. #en the thermometer is applied to pelites regionally metamorphosed at pressures of between 3 and 7 kbar it yields temperatures much higher than those from the garnet-biotite thermometer. A new empirical calibration is proposed for use with such rocks, with particular application where garnet occurs at lower grades than biotite. The new calibration is:In K+4.13 T (K) = where K is given by:In K = In Kd andXii are mole fractions in the garnets.The calibration was derived from comparison with the garnet-biotite thermometer of Ferry & Spear (1978), assuming no pressure-dependence for the partitioning between garnet and muscovite, no ferric iron partitioning, ideal mixing in muscovite, and the garnet mixing model of Ganguly & Saxena (1984) modified for a non-linear Ca effect. This latter garnet mixing model was selected because it gave the geologically most reasonable results. It has not proved possible to distinguish a pressure effect from a ferric-iron effect.Despite the simplifying assumptions used to derive the calibration, it yields temperatures generally within 15°C of those given by the garnet-biotite thermometer, and has been used to supply thermometric data in a low-grade region of the Canadian Rockies.