Triassic blueschists and eclogites from northwest Turkey:: vestiges of the Paleo-Tethyan subduction

Triassic eclogite and blueschist facies rocks occur as a thrust sheet, 25-km long and over 2-km thick, in an Eocene fold-and-thrust belt in northwest Turkey along the Izmir-Ankara suture. The thrust sheet consists mainly of metabasites with minor marble, phyllite and metachert, and rare lenses of serpentinite. The common blueschist facies mineral assemblage in the metabasites is sodic amphibole + epidote + albite + chlorite + phengite +/- garnet. Sodic amphibole commonly shows replacement by barroisite, and there is continuous petrographic transition from blueschist-metabasites to barroisite-bearing epidote-amphibolites. Eclogite with the mineral assemblage of gamet + sodic pyroxene + sodic-calcic amphibole + epidote is found only in one locality. P-T conditions of the epidote-blueschist facies metamorphism are estimated as 450 +/- 50 degreesC and 11 +/- 2 kbar. The blueschist formation was followed by a decrease in pressure and increase in temperature, leading to the development of barroisite-bearing epidote-amphibolites. Phengite, sodic amphibole and barroisite Ar/Ar ages from three metabasic rocks range between 215 and 205 Ma, and indicate Late Triassic high-pressure metamorphism. The Triassic blueschists in northwest Turkey constitute part of a much larger allochthonous tectonic unit of Triassic mafic volcanic rocks. They probably represent the upper layers of a Triassic oceanic plateau, which was accreted to the Laurasian margin during the latest Triassic. The close spatial association of the Triassic and Cretaceous blueschists along the Izmir-Ankara suture suggests that the suture represents a long-lived plate boundary of Late Palaeozoic to early Tertiary age. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.