The Mozambique Belt in northern Mozambique: Neoproterozoic (1100–850 Ma) crustal growth and tectogenesis, and superimposed Pan-African (800–550 Ma) tectonism

Copper-bearing (Paraíba-type) Tourmaline from Mozambique

“…In northern Mozambique, the basement consists primarily of strongly metamorphosed gneisses (migmatites) that were mainly deformed during the Pan-African tectonic event (800-550 Ma). During the period 600-410 Ma, these rocks were intruded by granitoids and rare-element granitic pegmatites (e.g., Pinna et al, 1993;Lächelt, 2004;figure 5). Most of the pegmatites were emplaced within approximately 200 km of Alto Ligonha.…”

Postcollisional High-Grade Metamorphism, Orogenic Collapse, and Differential Cooling of the East African Orogen of Northeast Mozambique

“…In this northwest region, deformation associated with greenschist facies metamorphism took place along discrete shear zones (Pinna et al 1993;Bingen et al 2009;Boyd et al 2010), and this area is consequently regarded as forming the foreland of the EAAO. Following Pinna et al (1993), we interpret the Chilwa-Mavago Corridor in the northwest part of the northern basement as a zone of thrusting at the western margin of the EAAO that possibly linked up with thrusts in southern Tanzania (e.g., Cutten et al 2006). However, titanite growth or cooling from an earlier event is hinted at by the results from sample AS17, with an estimated age of ca.…”

“…In the northwest, the northern basement is cut by a diffuse north-south-trending linear zone termed the "Chilwa-Mavago Corridor," which runs from the border with Tanzania to the Lú rio Belt and approximates the boundary between the Mesoproterozoic Unango and Marrupa Complexes. The ChilwaMavago Corridor has previously been interpreted as an array of Pan-African thrusts (Pinna et al 1993). In the northwest of the Unango Complex, extensive arrays of anastomosing shear zones (e.g., the Macaloge Shear Zone; Bingen et al 2009) connect with the Chilwa-Mavago Corridor and contain slivers of ca.…”

“…The spatial extent of the Lú rio Belt is also complex and can be defined in different but approximately spatially coincident ways (see Ueda et al 2012), based on (a) discontinuous exposures of Ocua Complex rocks, (b) the structural domains affected by intense aligned fabrics around the major lithological contacts, or (c) a sharp linear magnetic anomaly in the east. The Lú rio Belt has been interpreted in a number of ways, including as (a) a Mesoproterozoic or Ediacaran suture (Pinna et al 1993;Grantham et al 2008), (b) a transpressional, intraorogenic shear zone (Shackleton 1996), (c) a tectonic mé lange (Viola et al 2008), (d) a basal shear zone to the granulite-facies nappes (exposed to its north) that later became a focal zone of increasing q2 q3 q4 fold strain (Viola et al 2008), (e) an accommodation zone between two thermomechanically different parts of the orogen (Jacobs et al 2008), or more generally (f) as crustal-scale discontinuity of unknown origin that was repeatedly reactivated and reworked with varying kinematics over a wide area (Ueda et al 2012). In the eastern Lú rio Belt, peak metamorphic conditions and pressure-temperature-time evolution indicate an almost isothermal decompression path from ca.…”

Pan-African granulites of central Dronning Maud Land and Mozambique: A comparison within the East-African-Antarctic orogen

“…Northern Mozambique is dominated by Mesoproterozoic gneisses reworked during the Pan-African event (Pinna et al, 1993). The bedrock geology of the area has recently been re-mapped as part of an infrastructure development program (Norconsult Consortium, 2007), which documents widespread occurrence of granulite-facies rocks.…”