The fundamental Variscan problem: high-temperature metamorphism at different depths and high-pressure metamorphism at different temperatures

The evolution of the crystalline internal zone of the European Variscides (i.e. Moldanubian and Saxo-Thuringian) is best understood within a framework of two distinct subduction stages. An early, pre-Late Devonian (older than 380 Ma), subduction stage is recorded in medium-temperature eclogites and blueschists derived from low-pressure basaltic and gabbroic protoliths now found as minor relics in amphibolite facies meta-ophiolite or gneiss-metabasite nappe complexes. A second subduction and exhumation event produced further nappe complexes containing different types of mantle peridotites, along with their enclosed pyroxenites and high-temperature eclogites, associated with large volumes of high- T -high- P (900–1000°C, 15–20 kbar) felsic granulites. Abundant geochronological evidence points to a Carboniferous age ( c. 340 Ma) for the high- P -high- T metamorphism as well as an extremely rapid exhumation because the fault-bounded, granulite-peridotite-bearing tectonic units are also cut by late Variscan granitic plutons (315–325 Ma). The massive heat energy for the characteristic, and most widespread feature of the Variscan event, the low- P -high- T metamorphism (750–800°C, 4–6 kbar) and voluminous granitoid magmatism (325–305 Ma), comes from three sources. An internal heat component comes from imbrication of crust with upper-crustal radiogenic heat production potential in the region parallel to the subduction zone; an external mantle heat component is undoubtedly contributing to the transformation of crust taken to mantle depths (i.e. the granulites); and a heat component advected to the middle and lower crust seems inescapable if the hot granulite-peridotite complexes were exhumed and cooled as rapidly as petrological and geochronological evidence seems to suggest. Major mantle delamination and asthenospheric upwelling as a cause of heating in Early Carboniferous times is not supported by geochemical, geophysical or petrological-geochronological studies, although slab break-off probably did occur.