The transition from amphibolite-facies mylonite to chloritic breccia and role of the mylonite in formation of Eocene epizonal plutons, Bitterroot dome, Montana

The Bitterroot mylonite is a ductile-deformed amphibolitefacies mylonite (A-mylonite), abruptly capped by ductile- to brittle-deformed greenschist-facies mylonite (G-mylonite). The movement picture of the A-mylonite from its lineation and S-C-surfaces is strongly focused; the average orientation for the G-mylonite is similar but much more diffuse. Regional metamorphism, and intrusion of quartz diorite orthogneiss, granodiorite, and granite of the Idaho-Bitterroot batholith between 105 and less than 60 m.y. ago was followed by regional extension, formation of the A-mylonite, and rapid drop in temperature from about 700 °C to about 280 °C, at a time inferred to be about 57 to 53 m.y. ago. Pressure-relief melting of water-undersaturated rocks at deeper crustal levels, in response to the rapid decrease in pressure, may have produced the nearly dry magmas emplaced as very shallow plutons or erupted as the Challis rhyolitic volcanics 52 or 53 m.y. ago. The greenschist-facies mylonite/chloritic breccia formed during further cooling to about 100 °C, during listric normal faulting on the eastern flank of the Bitterroot dome about 40 m.y. ago.