Fabric and origin of gneissic layers in anorthositic rocks of the St. Charles sill, Ontario

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The St. Charles sill is located in the Grenville Province and consists of rocks of the anorthosite suite. The sill is a northwesterly trending body, 11 km long and as much as 0.8 km wide, and with a steep dip to the northeast. The sill is characterized by interlayered massive and gneissic rocks metamorphosed under conditions of the amphibolite facies. In the massive rocks plagioclase occurs as strongly twinned laths that range in size from fine-grained crystals to megacrysts. Hornblende, biotite, and garnet occur as subophitic masses and apparently replace original pyroxene. In the gneissic rocks the plagioclase ranges in size from fine to coarse grained and the primary grains are partially replaced by elongate, weakly twinned, anhedral plagioclase. The gneissosity is defined by a dimensional preferred orientation of biotite, hornblende, and secondary plagioclase. The formation of the secondary plagioclase is attributed largely to growth by grain boundary diffusion and, to a lesser extent, by replacement of primary plagioclase by grain boundary migration. In the diffusion mechanism strain rate is inversely proportional to grain size and it is interpreted that the tectonic fabric developed in the finer grained layers of the sill while the coarser grained layers remained essentially undeformed.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: