Emplacement of the Arzachena Pluton (Corsica-Sardinia Batholith) and the geodynamics of incoming Pangaea

The assembly of the Corsica-Sardinia Batholith (C-SB) coincides with final shaping of the Variscan belt and represents a key structure to unravel the feedbacks between partial melting, rheology and the evolution of collisional orogens. This paper presents a model for the genesis of the Arzachena pluton (AZN), one of the major calc-alkaline massifs of the C-SB, based on U-Pb zircon dating, thermobarometry and structural analysis. Major and trace element compositions indicate that AZN has hybrid characteristics between that of typical S- and I-type granites, that could be explained in terms of incremental melting of a heterogeneous crustal source made of metatexites and Ordovician calc-alkaline granitoids. Growth of the pluton started around 320-315 Ma with the emplacement at middle crustal level (0.37-0.4 GPa) of granodioritic melts within narrow, conjugate, NW-SE sinistral and E-W dextral shear zones. The main growth stage (311 + 6/-4 Ma) is marked by emplacement of large volumes of monzogranitic melts that induced a local decrease of the crustal strength expressed by horizontal channel flow driven by the gravity. Finally (307.6 +/- 3.5 Ma), leucogranites emplaced within radial and peripheral dilatant fractures developed during the cooling of the main body. The transition from magmatic to sub-magmatic and HT-solid state fabric observed throughout AZN indicates that deformation plays a non-trivial role during the growth of the magmatic system. Restoring the position of the Corsica-Sardinia block to early Permian coordinates allow to recast the birth of the C-SB in a consistent geodynamic framework that conciliates the development of conjugates strike-slip structures, the oroclinal bending of the chain and the thermal relaxation. This study indicates that the C-SB had an active role during post-orogenic extension rather than being just a consequence of it. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.