Geochemical and isotope geochemical investigations on amphibolite-facies metabasites from the Spessart Crystalline basement, Mid-German Crystalline Zone

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Martin Okrusch
• Subject Area: Mineralogy, Petrology and Geochemistry
• Term: from 2013 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 234020669

• Final Report Year: 2015

Final Report Abstract

With the help of numerous new lithogeochemical and bulk rock isotopic (Nd, Sr, Pb) data of metabasic rocks two distinct crustal terranes are inferred in the Spessart-Odenwald basement. These terranes are separated by a major fault zone (Otzberg-Michelbach Fault Zone), along which rocks of inferred peri-Gondwana origin, now exposed in the western Odenwald and the northernmost Spessart were thrust onto probable Baltica/Avalonia-derived rocks that are exposed as a tectonic window in the eastern Odenwald and the central and southern Spessart. It is further suggested that the Otzberg-Michelbach Fault Zone is part of the lithospheric-scale Rheic Suture.

Publications

• (2015). Variscan terrane boundaries in the Odenwald-Spessart Crystalline Zone: new evidence from ocean ridge, intraplate and arc-derived metabasic rocks. Lithos 220-223, 23-42
  Will, T.M., Lee, S.-H., Schmädicke, E., Frimmel, H.E., Okrusch, M.
  (See online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lithos.2015.01.018)