Argon and fission track dating of Alpine metamorphism and basement exhumation in the Sopron Mts. (Eastern Alps, Hungary): thermochronology or mineral growth?

Abstract

The crystalline basement rocks of the Sopron Mountains are the easternmost and most isolated outcrops of the Austroalpine basement of the Eastern Alps. Ar/Ar and K/Ar dating of phengitic mica indicates that the Eoalpine high-pressure metamorphism of the area occurred between 76 and 71 Ma. Short-lived metamorphism is characterised by fluid-poor conditions. Fluid circulation was mostly restricted to shear zones, thus the degree of Alpine overprint has an extreme spatial variation. In several metamorphic slices Variscan mineral assemblages have been preserved and biotite yielded Variscan and Permo-Triassic Ar ages. Different mineral and isotope thermometers ( literature data) yielded temperatures of 500 - 600 degreesC for the peak of Alpine metamorphism in the Sopron Mountains, but muscovite and biotite do not show complete argon resetting. Thus, we consider this crystalline area as a well constrained natural test site, which either indicates considerably high closure temperatures ( around 550 degreesC) for Ar in muscovite and biotite in a dry metamorphic environment, or which is suitable for testing the widely applied methods of temperature estimations under disequilibrium conditions. Apatite fission track results and their thermal modeling, together with structural, mineralogical and sedimentological observations, allows the identification of a postmetamorphic, Eocene hydrothermal event and Late Miocene-Pliocene sediment burial of the crystalline rocks of the Sopron Mountains.