Sequential kinetic modelling: A new tool decodes pulsed tectonic patterns in early hot orogens of Earth

Abstract

Tectonic styles in an early hot Earth were different from the present-day situation governed by plate tectonics. Processes in such hot settings remain poorly understood because they often occur on timescales that are below the resolution of conventional isotopic clocks, the rock records are fragmentary and these have been superposed by later high-temperature events. We have developed a tool based on diffusion kinetics to overcome these difficulties and reconstruct sequences of short-lived episodes. Application of the method to a rock from the ultra-hot c.1.6 Ga orogenic domain of the Central Indian Tectonic Zone, where additional data are available to verify the results, shows that pulses of approach and roll-back of colliding plates preceded the final closure and collision. We demonstrate that cooling from ultra-high temperature metamorphic conditions in the orogen took place in multiple pulses that occurred with a periodicity of about 10 Myr at rates that vary between 100's to 10's °C/Myr, and burial-/exhumation-rates that vary between 30 and 2 km/Myr, respectively. Such details of tectonic processes in the Precambrian, with quantification of variable heating-, cooling-, burial- and exhumation-rates of individual stages, have not been accessible until now. Application of this method to other regions would provide a means of exploring the thermal viability of the inferred long durations (>100 Myr) for some ultra-high temperature orogenies.