Weak and Slow, Strong and Fast: How Shear Zones Evolve in a Dry Continental Crust (Musgrave Ranges, Central Australia)

The strike-slip Davenport Shear Zone in Central Australia developed during the Petermann Orogeny (~550 Ma) in an intracontinental lower crustal setting under dry subeclogite facies conditions (~650 °C, 1.2 GPa). This approximately 5-km-wide mylonite zone encloses several large low-strain domains, allowing a detailed study of the initiation of shear zones and their progressive development. Quartzo-feldspathic gneisses and granitoids contain compositional layers, such as quartz-rich pegmatites, mafic bands, and dykes, which should preferentially localize viscous deformation if favorably orientated. This is not observed, except for long, continuous, and fine-grained dolerite dykes. Instead, many shear zones, typically a few millimeters to centimeters in width but extending for tens of meters, commonly exploited pseudotachylytes and are sometimes parallel to a network of little overprinted fractures. The recrystallized mineral assemblage in the sheared pseudotachylyte is similar to that in the host gneiss, without associated hydration due to fluid-rock interaction. Lack of localization in quartz-rich, coarser-grained (typically >50 μm) rocks compared to mafic dykes, precursor fractures, and pseudotachylytes implies that localization in the dry lower crust preferentially occurs along elongate, planar fine-grained layers. Transient high stress repeatedly initiated fractures, providing finer-grained, weaker, planar precursors that localized subsequent ductile shear zones. This intimate interplay between brittle and ductile deformation suggests a local source for lower crustal earthquakes, rather than downward migration of earthquakes from the shallower, usually more seismogenic part of the crust.