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A step towards unraveling the paleogeographic attribution of pre-Mesozoic basement complexes in the Western Alps based on U–Pb geochronology of Permian magmatism Michel Ballèvre, Audrey Camonin, Paola Manzotti, Marc Poujol To cite this version: Michel Ballèvre, Audrey Camonin, Paola Manzotti, Marc Poujol. A step towards unraveling the paleogeographic attribution of pre-Mesozoic basement complexes in the Western Alps based on U–Pb geochronology of Permian magmatism. Swiss Journal of Geosciences, Springer, 2020, 113 (1), pp.12. 10.1186/s00015-020-00367-1. insu-02957285 HAL Id: insu-02957285 https://hal-insu.archives-ouvertes.fr/insu-02957285 Submitted on 14 Oct 2020 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Ballèvre et al. Swiss J Geosci (2020) 113:12 https://doi.org/10.1186/s00015-020-00367-1 Swiss Journal of Geosciences ORIGINAL PAPER Open Access A step towards unraveling the paleogeographic attribution of pre-Mesozoic basement complexes in the Western Alps based on U–Pb geochronology of Permian magmatism Michel Ballèvre1* , Audrey Camonin1, Paola Manzotti2 and Marc Poujol1 Abstract The Briançonnais Domain (Western Alps) represented the thinned continental margin facing the Piemonte-Liguria Ocean, later shortened during the Alpine orogeny. In the external part of the External Briançonnais Domain (Zone Houillère), the Palaeozoic basement displays microdioritic intrusions into Carboniferous sediments and andesitic volcanics resting on top of the Carboniferous sediments. These magmatic rocks are analysed at two well-known localities (Guil volcanics and Combarine sill). Geochemical data show that the two occurrences belong to the same calc-alkaline association. LA-ICP-MS U–Pb ages have been obtained for the Guil volcanics (zircon: 291.3 2.0 Ma and apatite: 287.5 2.6 Ma), and the Combarine sill (zircon: 295.9 2.6 Ma and apatite: 288.0 4.5 Ma). These± ages show that the calc-alkaline± magmatism is of Early Permian age. During± Alpine orogeny, a low-grade± metamorphism, best recorded by lawsonite-bearing veins in the Guil andesites, took place at about 0.4 GPa, 350 °C in the External Brian- çonnais and Alpine metamorphism was not able to reset the U–Pb system in apatite. The Late Palaeozoic history of the Zone Houillère is identical to the one recorded in the Pinerolo Unit, located further East in the Dora-Maira Massif, and having experienced a garnet-blueschist metamorphism during the Alpine orogeny. The comparison of these two units allows for a better understanding of the link between the Palaeozoic basements, mostly subducted during the Alpine convergence, and their Mesozoic covers, generally detached at an early stage of the convergence history. Keywords: Permian, Andesite, Briançonnais, Lawsonite, Dora-Maira 1 Introduction regime occurred, with crustal extension or transtension In western and central Europe, crustal shortening asso- becoming dominant. Tis change is best documented ciated with Variscan orogeny mainly took place during by (i) the installation of numerous small-scale Basin- the Early and early Late Carboniferous. In latest Car- and-Range type basins (so called Permo-Carboniferous boniferous to the earliest Permian times (i.e. ‘Stephanian’ basins) in the previously thickened domain (e.g. Lorenz to ‘Autunian’), however, a drastic change of the tectonic and Nicholls 1976; Ménard and Molnar 1988), and (ii) by the development of large-scale volcano-sedimentary deposits unconformably covering Variscan structures Editorial handling: Stefan Schmid. since the earliest Permian, displaying intermediate and *Correspondence: [email protected] acidic volcanics. Given the lack of good biostratigraphic 1 CNRS, Géosciences Rennes-UMR 6118, Univ. Rennes, 35000 Rennes, markers in the 50 Ma-long history of the Permian, France Full list of author information is available at the end of the article such volcanic rocks provide valuable geochronological © The Author(s) 2020. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creat iveco mmons .org/licen ses/by/4.0/. 12 Page 2 of 28 M. Ballèvre et al. markers for constraining the evolution of the European internal unit of the Western Alps transect, i.e. the Dora- crust in the Permian (e.g. Pellenard et al. 2017; Ducassou Maira Massif, exposes a window below high-pressure et al. 2019). metamorphic oceanic units (i.e. M. Viso unit). It has While at frst sight Permian magmatism appears to be been postulated that the structurally lowest unit within widespread all-over Western Europe, heterogeneities the Dora Maira window, the Pinerolo Unit that escaped occur, both spatially and temporally. In a recent synthe- eclogite facies metamorphism (Bousquet et al. 2012), sis about the Western Alps, Ballèvre et al. (2018) pointed may be largely made up of Permo-Carboniferous depos- out that Permian magmatism is widespread in the inter- its typical for the Zone Houilllère of the External Brian- nal domains of the belt, i.e. in the basement of the Bri- çonnais (Novarese 1898; Michard 1977; Manzotti et al. ançonnais paleogeographical domain (referred to as 2014). However its Mesozoic cover is not preserved and Briançonnais Domain in the following) representing the became detached. Hence, we will also discuss the origi- European passive margin towards the Piemonte-Liguria nal links between detached Mesozoic successions now Ocean and in the Sesia-Dent Blanche and South-Alpine outcropping in the External Briançonnais and parts of domains of the opposite passive margin. In contrast, it their former basement potentially preserved in the Dora- is very sparsely found in the external paleogeographic Maira Massif. domains (External Massifs); these basement complexes are characterized by Carboniferous-age magmatism lead- 2 Geological setting ing to the widespread intrusion of Carboniferous grani- In the Western Alps, the Briançonnais Domain is a seg- toids. Concerning the Briançonnais Domain in Liguria ment of thinned continental crust located between the some authors pointed to the existence of two post-Vari- partly oceanic Valaisan Basin to the West and the Pie- scan magmatic cycles of Permian age (e.g. Cortesogno monte-Liguria Ocean to the East (Schmid et al. 2004, et al. 1998). Tis contribution investigates in detail the 2017). Tis continental ribbon derived from Europe has suspected Permian magmatism in the type-area of the been shortened and accreted to the more external Euro- Briançonnais Domain (referred to as External Briançon- pean palaeomargin during the fnal stages of the building nais in the following) located along a continuous transect of the orogenic prism (from Late Eocene to Early Oligo- between the Pelvoux External Massif and the Dora-Maira cene) (e.g. Tricart 1980, 1984). Crustal shortening was Internal Massif (Fig. 1) with the aim to (i) further con- associated with high pressure–low temperature meta- strain extent and timing of such magmatism within the morphism, increasing in intensity from West (greenschist various paleogeographic domains, and (ii) determine to facies) to East (blueschist and eclogite facies) (Saliot which of the two postulated Permian cycles this magma- 1973; Michard et al. 2004; Bousquet et al. 2008, 2012). tism may belong. In the southern part of the Western Alps (Fig. 1), the Tis study therefore investigates late Palaeozoic mag- Briançonnais Domain is classically divided into two dif- matism in the basement of the external part of the Bri- ferent zones. To the West and directly adjacent to the ançonnais Domain near Briançon, which represented Penninic Front (e.g. Ceriani et al. 2001), a narrow, elon- a more proximal part of the former European palaeo- gated and arcuate zone essentially consists of stacked margin facing the Piemonte-Liguria Ocean. In this area, cover nappes defning the Briançonnais Zone s.str., the late Palaeozoic magmatism is represented by numerous External Briançonnais in Figs. 1 and 2 (Termier 1903; microdioritic dykes and sills intruding the Carbonifer- Gignoux and Moret 1938; Debelmas 1955; Gidon 1962). ous sediments from the “Zone Houillère”, and by a few A more internal part of the Briançonnais Zone (i.e. the volcanics. Our analysis concentrates on two of the most La Chapelue and Chateau Queyras slices in Fig. 2 that are famous and easily accessible sites, namely the volcanics part of the Internal Briançonnais) is dominated by east- from the Guil valley, and a sill located close to the city of verging late stage backfolds and backthrusts that often Briançon. Our geochronological study uses the LA-ICP- invert the original nappe stack, bringing Briançonnais MS on both zircon and apatite. Given the high closure derived thrust sheets over ophiolites and associated sedi- temperature for the U–Pb system in zircon (> 900 °C: ments derived from the Piemonte-Liguria Ocean such as Cherniak and Watson 2000), we expect to obtain mag- the M.