EGU25-11065, updated on 15 Mar 2025
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-11065
EGU General Assembly 2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Sublithospheric reworking of the continental crust
Daniel Gómez Frutos1, Antonio Castro1, Attila Balázs2, and Taras Gerya2
Daniel Gómez Frutos et al.
  • 1Departamento de Geología, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Spain (daniel.gomez@csic.es)
  • 2Institute for Geophysics, ETH-Zurich, Switzerland

The formation of the continental crust is driven by an igneous process in which mantle-derived magmatism is incorporated into the overlying crust. Continental collision represents a major lithospheric event, where crustal destruction and growth result from balancing continental subduction and orogenic magmatism. Emerging evidence supports a common mantle source for all orogenic, post-collisional magmatic suites. However, the geodynamic triggers behind the metasomatized mantle source of post-collisional magmas remain uncertain, and so does their implication for crustal evolution. In this work we present an integrated thermomechanical–experimental approach to constrain the geodynamic triggers behind orogenic magmatism. Numerical models predict the consistent relamination of deeply subducted continental crust into the orogenic lithosphere during continental collision, owing to the buoyancy-driven detachment of the upper crust. The interaction between the relaminated upper crust and the overlying peridotite is enhanced by protracted brittle-ductile damage of the lithosphere, facilitating the mechanical mixing of crust and mantle peridotite. Our high-pressure experiments confirm that this hybrid interaction generates orogenic magmas, reproducing their natural compositional trends. This crust-mantle interaction has been recorded throughout Earth's history, with magmatism in successive orogenic cycles exhibiting increasingly heterogeneous isotopic signatures. These findings highlight the critical role of deep crustal relamination in shaping Earth's continental crust.

How to cite: Gómez Frutos, D., Castro, A., Balázs, A., and Gerya, T.: Sublithospheric reworking of the continental crust, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-11065, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-11065, 2025.