The Rheic Ocean suture resulted from pre-Carboniferous oceanic subduction followed by Late Devonian-Carboniferous Variscan collision. In SW Iberia, this suture has been classically located along the boundary between the Ossa-Morena and South Portuguese Zones based on the presence of three units: (i) a conspicuous metamafic unit (Beja-Acebuches) that crops out along this boundary and has been interpreted as a pre-Carboniferous Rheic Ocean ophiolite; (ii) a low-grade metasedimentary unit with minor mid-ocean ridge basalt-like lithologies (Pulo do Lobo unit), thought to represent a Rheic Ocean subduction-related accretionary prism; and (iii) the allochthonous Cubito-Moura unit that contains high-pressure and ophiolitic-like rocks. We report new structural and geochronological data that allow us to reinterpret the origin and internal structure of the Beja-Acebuches and the Pulo do Lobo units. Thus, both the Beja-Acebuches protoliths and the Pulo do Lobo metabasalts would have been formed in the context of an intracollisional extensional stage that interrupted the Variscan collision at early Carboniferous time, after the Rheic Ocean consumption, and the first continental collision. Later on, collision was resumed in an oblique left-lateral regime that gave way to coeval frontal (folds and thrusts) and lateral (shear zones and strike-slip faults) structures, with variable pressure-temperature conditions and space distribution along time. As a consequence of the superposition of transtension and complex transpression, the Rheic suture in SW Iberia has an obscure nearly cryptic appearance.

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Abstract. Different transpressional scenarios have been proposed to relate kinematics and complex deformation patterns. We apply the most suitable of them to the Variscan orogeny in SW Iberia, which is characterized by a number of successive left-lateral transpressional structures developed in the Devonian to Carboniferous period. These structures resulted from the oblique convergence between three continental terranes (Central Iberian Zone, Ossa-Morena Zone and South Portuguese Zone), whose amalgamation gave way to both intense shearing at the suture-like contacts and transpressional deformation of the continental pieces in-between, thus showing strain partitioning in space and time. We have quantified the kinematics of the collisional convergence by using the available data on folding, shearing and faulting patterns, as well as tectonic fabrics and finite strain measurements. Given the uncertainties regarding the data and the boundary conditions modeled, our results must be considered as a semiquantitative approximation to the issue, though very significant from a regional point of view. The total collisional convergence surpasses 1000 km, most of them corresponding to left-lateral displacement parallel to terrane boundaries. The average vector of convergence is oriented E-W (present-day coordinates), thus reasserting the left-lateral oblique collision in SW Iberia, in contrast with the dextral component that prevailed elsewhere in the Variscan orogen. This particular kinematics of SW Iberia is understood in the context of an Avalonian plate salient currently represented by the South Portuguese Zone.

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