Calabria coast to coast: a nearly complete cross-section of continental crust, with a 13 km-thick late Variscan batholith
Southern Calabria is one of the rare places in the world where a nearly complete section of late Paleozoic continental crust is exposed with regularity, from basal metagabbros equilibrated at a depth of ~ 35 km, through mafic and felsic granulites and overlying metapelitic migmatites, to upper crustal paragneisses and phyllites. The crustal section also includes the late Variscan Serre Batholith (~ 297-292 Ma), a ~ 13 km-thick composite and zoned batholith, consisting of a stack of tabular granitoid units, from strongly deformed to apparently undeformed, and ranging in composition from quartz diorite-tonalite to granodiorite-granite, which were emplaced sequentially, at decreasing depths from about 23 to 6 km. In this field trip, we will be exploring the entire crustal section from bottom to top, with a central focus on the role of granitoid magmatism in the growth and evolution of the continental crust in collisional zones, together with several more specific topics related to the large variety of rock structures and compositions.