The Limpopo Belt is located in

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring coun ...

and

Zimbabwe Zimbabwe (), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the south-west, Zambia to the north, and ...

, runs E-NE, and joins the

Kaapvaal Craton The Kaapvaal Craton (centred on Limpopo Province in South Africa), along with the Pilbara Craton of Western Australia, are the only remaining areas of pristine 3.6–2.5 Ga (billion years ago) crust on Earth. Similarities of rock records fr ...

to the south with the

Zimbabwe Craton The Zimbabwe Craton is an area in Southern Africa of ancient continental crust, being a part of the ancient continent of Western Gondwana, with rocks dating back to the early Archean Eon, possibly as early as 3.46 billion years ago ( Ga.). The c ...

to the north. The belt is of high-grade

metamorphic rocks Metamorphic rocks arise from the transformation of existing rock to new types of rock in a process called metamorphism. The original rock (protolith) is subjected to temperatures greater than and, often, elevated pressure of or more, caus ...

that have undergone a long cycle of metamorphism and deformation that ended 2.0 billion years ago, after the stabilisation of the adjacent massifs. The belt comprises 3 components: the Central Zone, the North Marginal Zone and the South Marginal Zone.

Ca. 3.2-2.9 Ga Limpopo Central Zone

The 250 km wide Limpopo belt of southern Africa is an east-northeast trending zone of granulite facies tectonites separating the granitoid-greenstone terranes of the Kaapvaal and Zimbabwe cratons. Large scale ductile

shear zone In geology, a shear zone is a thin zone within the Earth's crust or upper mantle that has been strongly deformed, due to the walls of rock on either side of the zone slipping past each other. In the upper crust, where rock is brittle, the she ...

s are an integral part of Limpopo belt architecture. They define the boundaries between the belt and the adjacent cratons and separate internal zones within the belt. The shear zones forming the external (northern, southern and western) margins of the belt are interpreted as uplift structures of the overthickened crust. The crustal evolution of the Limpopo Central Zone can be summarized into three main periods: 3.2-2.9 Ga, ~2.6 Ga, and ~2.0 Ga. The two first periods are mainly characterized by

magma Magma () is the molten or semi-molten natural material from which all igneous rocks are formed. Magma is found beneath the surface of the Earth, and evidence of magmatism has also been discovered on other terrestrial planets and some natura ...

tic activity leading to the formation of Archaean

Tonalite Tonalite is an igneous, plutonic ( intrusive) rock, of felsic composition, with phaneritic (coarse-grained) texture. Feldspar is present as plagioclase (typically oligoclase or andesine) with alkali feldspar making up less than 10% of the total ...

- Trondhjemite-

Granodiorite Granodiorite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock similar to granite, but containing more plagioclase feldspar than orthoclase feldspar. The term banatite is sometimes used informally for various rocks ranging from gr ...

(TTG) such as the Sand River Gneisses or the Bulai Granite intrusion. The Early

Proterozoic The Proterozoic () is a geological eon spanning the time interval from 2500 to 538.8million years ago. It is the most recent part of the Precambrian "supereon". It is also the longest eon of the Earth's geologic time scale, and it is subdivided i ...

event took place under high-grade

metamorphic Metamorphic rocks arise from the transformation of existing rock to new types of rock in a process called metamorphism. The original rock (protolith) is subjected to temperatures greater than and, often, elevated pressure of or more, causi ...

conditions during which partial melting formed large amount of

granitic A granitoid is a generic term for a diverse category of coarse-grained igneous rocks that consist predominantly of quartz, plagioclase, and alkali feldspar. Granitoids range from plagioclase-rich tonalites to alkali-rich syenites and from quartz- ...

melt. The Limpopo Central Zone shows relics of late Archean high grade metamorphism. In the Northern (NMZ) and Southern Marginal Zones (SMZ) that adjoin the Zimbabwe and Kaapvaal cratons, respectively, the last high grade metamorphic episodes were late Archean. The relics in the Central Zone are characterised by an anticlockwise p-T-evolution, at ca. 2.55 Ga. In the NMZ repeated crustal remelting and intrusion of charnoenderbitic magmas continued to 2.58 Ga, producing counterclockwise p-T paths. In contrast the SMZ consists of medium to

high pressure In science and engineering the study of high pressure examines its effects on materials and the design and construction of devices, such as a diamond anvil cell, which can create high pressure. By ''high pressure'' is usually meant pressures of th ...

granulites, which underwent a clockwise p-T-evolution at ca. 2.69 Ga, followed by decompression and isobaric cooling. In the Northern Kaapvaal Craton (Renosterkoppies Greenstone Belt, Pietersburg area)

tectonism Tectonics (; ) are the processes that control the structure and properties of the Earth's crust and its evolution through time. These include the processes of mountain building, the growth and behavior of the strong, old cores of continents k ...

took place under amphibolite facies conditions at ca. 2.75 Ga and can therefore not be related to any events in the Limpopo belt. Thus the different tectonic units have different late Archean tectonometamorphic histories.

Trace element __NOTOC__ A trace element, also called minor element, is a chemical element whose concentration (or other measure of amount) is very low (a "trace amount"). They are classified into two groups: essential and non-essential. Essential trace elements ...

geochemistry as well as Pb + Nd isotope characteristics of the SMZ are similar to those of the Kaapvaal Craton, with low Th and U concentrations around 2 and 0.7 ppm. Low U concentrations in the SMZ are not a consequence of high grade metamorphism. The NMZ, with high Th, U concentrations (10.8 and 2.5 ppm) and radiogenic Pb, resembles the adjoining Zimbabwe craton more. The differences in late Archean tectonic styles between NMZ and SMZ+KC is a possible consequence of the differences in Th and U content of these provinces. "The Mahalapye granite in the extreme western part of the Central Zone is a post-tectonic intrusion that crystallized at 2.023 Ga. This suggests that mineral ages of ca 2.0 Ga from the eastern part of the Central Zone date metamorphism during reworking of Archaean age shear zones rather than a collision between the Kaapvaal and Zimbabwe cratons as has been earlier suggested.Armstrong, Richard and Stephen McCourt. (1999) "SHRIMP U-Pb Zircon Geochronology of Granites from the Western Part of the Limpopo Belt Southern Africa: Implications for the Age of the Limpopo Orogeny." {{cite web , url=http://www.the-conference.com/JConfAbs/4/140.html , title=140 , accessdate=2006-05-14 , url-status=dead, archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20060514104020/http://www.the-conference.com/JConfAbs/4/140.html , archivedate=2006-05-14

References

Plate tectonics Geography of South Africa Geology of Zimbabwe Belt regions

Ca. 3.2-2.9 Ga Limpopo Central Zone

See also

References