Petrology of the Continental Crust
The Earth’s continental crust records a variety of dynamic processes and events, and there are few better places to study these than in New Zealand. The stresses imparted from Australia-Pacific plate boundary, since the Miocene, have uplifted a large area of continental crust formerly part of the paleo-Pacific Gondwana supercontinent margin. The South Island of New Zealand essentially exposes a Mesozoic continental margin from (in the east) a fore-arc accretionary prism, through a series of accreted magmatic arcs, into (in the west) metamorphic and igneous rocks that comprise the former continental margin. This sequence has been dextral displaced ~480 km by the active Alpine Fault, and differing degrees of uplift have exposed a variety of crustal levels. We have active research programs in Fiordland, Westland, The Southern Alps
Find out more:
- Our Ancient Orogens: New Zealand’s role in Gondwana’s evolution
- Early Cretaceous Deformation Related to Metamorphic Core Complex Formation
- Carbonatites from a Lamprophyric Dyke Swarm, South Westland, New Zealand
- The relationship of metamorphism to S-type magmatism
Cretaceous leucogranite dikes cutting across Paleozoic marble in central Fiordland