|
Isotope Techniques for Dating of Fluid Flow |
1 Chemical Sciences and Technology Division, CST-1, MS-G740, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA
2 Dept Earth Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK
Rb-Sr and Pb-Pb data are reported from separated minerals (amphibole, albite, calcite, epidote), altered wall rocks, and fluid inclusions trapped in quartz, from veins associated with retrogressive shear zones cutting the Néouvielle granodiorite massif in the central French Pyrenees. Alteration in the shear zones was caused by movement of hypersaline brines during deformation. Shear zones with similar kinematics occur in granodiorites and high grade gneisses throughout the northern Axial Zone of the Pyrenees, and have been attributed variously to both the Variscan and Alpine orogenies. Rb-Sr data on a syntectonic, polymineralic vein and its altered wall rock support an Alpine age for deformation and fluid flow, giving an isochron of 47 ± 8 Ma, or 48 ± 2 Ma if albite is excluded. Another vein gives a similar age for altered wall rock and albite, but chlorite and quartz-hosted fluid inclusions are out of equilibrium. Pb data plot as quasi-linear arrays on ratio plots, with no age significance. The usefulness of this latter technique is restricted by the slow rate of uranium decay in these young rocks, but in any case Pb isotopic ratios do not appear to have homogenized during vein formation.
