A Microstructural and Geochronological Investigation of the Coyote Mountain Metamorphic Core Complex (AZ)

• Main Author: Borel, Megan E.
• Language: EN
• Published: University of Louisiana at Lafayette 2019
• Subjects: Geology
• Online Access: http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10814678

<p>The Coyote Mountains is a metamorphic core complex that makes up the northern end of the 80-km long Baboquivari Mountain complex. The Baboquivari Mountain complex is composed of Mesozoic rocks, Cenozoic granites, pegmatites, and metasediments (Wright and Haxel, 1982; Haxel et al., 1980, 1984). In the Coyote Mountains, there is an intrusion of the Pan Tak granite, a muscovite-biotite-garnet peraluminous granite dated at 58 Ma based on U-Pb analysis of zircon. The Pan Tak and other intrusions within the Baboquivari Mountains have been interpreted as anatectics melts representing the culmination of a Laramide crustal shortening orogenic event that started in the Late Cretaceous, about ~70 mya (Goodwin and Haxel, 1990). However, field evidence, as well as petrographic and microstructural analyses of metamorphic and deformational fabrics/structures show that the ~58 mya intrusive/magmatic fabric is overprinted by a secondary tectonic event. This event is particularly well recorded in the northern part of the Coyote Mountains, where a northdipping mylonitic shear zone is exposed. This study focuses on the Pan Tak granite with twenty samples from the northern portion of the Coyote Mountains, directly north of Coyote Peak, from the mapped areas of granites and mylonites.