Exhumation of the Greater Himalayan Sequence Along the Zanskar Shear Zone, NW India

The Zanskar Shear Zone (ZSZ), the western extent of the South Tibetan Detachment System, exposes high-grade metamorphic rocks of the Greater Himalayan Sequence (GHS) in its footwall. Granites and metapelites collected along the the ZSZ in the Suru River valley provide how and when the GHS rocks exhumed and were deformed. There are two suits of Paleozoic granites deformed within the ZSZ: Pan-African Cambrian-Ordovician granites at the cores of gneiss domes and Mississippian-Permian granites related to Panjal Traps magmatism. Age of Himalayan granites indicates 28-16 Ma which is concurrent with anatectic leucogranite crystallization. The metamorphic mineral assemblage indicates increasing metamorhic grade from NE to SW and comprises Qtz × Kfs + Pl + Bt × Ms × Sil × Ky × Grt × St × Chl × Tur × Rt. In addition to macroscopic evidence, strongly deformed quartz grains, deformation twins, pressure shadows, and kink bands have been observed to demonstrate micro-tectonics evidence. There are two different method to explain exhumation and deformation of the GHS metapelites: Electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) crystallographic mapping and pseudosection modeling. While EBSD indicates the potential temperature of deformation, pseudosection modeling with Perple_X specifically presents the exhumation path of the GHS rocks. Pseudosection modeling with Perple_X , based on whole-rock geochemical analysis, is set pressure and temperature to 0.4-1.2 GPa and 300-900°C, and uses specific solution models, Bio(TCC), Chl(HP), St(HP), feldspar, Mica(CHA), Gt(HP), and hCrd, namely. These two methods are used by combining with geo/thermochronology data from U-Pb, 40Ar/39Ar, and (U-Th)/He, constraining the age of metamorphism, the cooling and exhumation time of the GHS rocks, and the end of shearing of deformation, respectively. 40Ar/39Ar dating on muscovite and biotite constrains cooling and exhumation ages of the GHS as ~20-19 Ma and 15 Ma, respectively. A metamorphic pressure-temperature-time-deformation (P-T-t-d) history of the GHS rocks, generated in the light of these combining data using multi methods, fills gaps in data to understand tectonic and metamorphic evolution of the GHS rocks, deformed within the ZSZ, in the Suru River valley which has less-clarified data compared to the eastern part of the GHS.