Chronology, geochemistry, metamorphic evolution and its tectonic implications of the Toksai garnet amphibolites in the northern margin of Yili Block

High-pressure and ultrahigh-pressure minerals tend to be preserved in mafic and ultramafic metamorphic rocks, such as eclogites and garnet amphibolites, rather than felsic rocks. Generally, the garnet amphibolites preserve particular porphyroblastic and corona textures that provide important information of geological processes. Therefore, identification of garnet amphibolite might hint that subduction or collision processes were likely to have occurred.

The Yili Block is one microcontinent in southwest of Central Asian Orogenic Belt, with Precambrain basement rocks exposed in the northern and southern margin. The Middle to Late Ordovician arc-type magmatic rocks were identified in the northern margin of the Yili Block with a subduction-related calc-alkaline affinity infer that the southward subduction of the Junggar Ocran beneath the Yili Block, but the record of coeval metamorphism is rarely reported. The Toksai garnet amphibolites idientified from the Wenquan Group in the northern margin of Yili Block records a clockwise P-T-t path. Its near isothermal depressive retrogressive metamorphism was typical characteristic of the Western Alps P-T path, recording the process of subduction and collision. The protolith belongs to tholeiite, with high TiO₂ and low K₂O+Na₂O contents (3.10~3.89 wt.%, 0.76~2.01 wt.% respectively), enrichment of large ionic lithophile elements and depletion of high field strength elements, and enrichment of rare earth elements, showing the geochemical characteristics of tholeiite in intra-continental rift setting (Th/Ta=1.70~2.76, Ta/Hf=0.23~0.37). The geochemical characteristics reveal that the magmatic rocks derived from an OIB-like mantle source. The garnet amphibolites also has low contents of MgO (4.82~6.40 wt.%), Cr (70.8~224 ppm), Ni (9.68~65.7 ppm) and low values of Mg^# (34.0~41.3), Nb/U (14.3~36.3), Nb/Ta (9.70~16.2), indicating that their protolith are not primitive magma, were formed by separate crystallization of different mineral phases with a small amount of crustal contamination. The zircon U-Pb dating results suggest that the garnet amphibolites protolith was formed in the middle to late Neoproterozoic, and the metamorphic age is end of Late Ordovician (450~440 Ma). The zircon and monazite from surrounding rocks also record the coeval tectonic thermal event. Consequently, it is inferred that the protolith of the garnet amphibolites may have formed in an intraplate rifting setting as a result of the breakup of Rodinia, and indicating that the Yili Block maybe a continental fragment separated from the Tarim Block during the middle to late Neoproterozoic. In the Middle to Late Ordovician, the Wenquan Group as a part of Aktau-Wenquan contineantal domain was involved in the continental–arc collision and continuing accretion in north of the Yili/Kazakhstan Block with the southward subduction of the Junggar–Balkhash oceanic lithosphere, and experience high amphibolite facies metamorphism in the end of Ordovician.