Crustal thinning and exhumation along a fossil magma-poor distal margin preserved in Corsica: A hot rift to drift transition?

Rift-related thinning of continental basement along distal margins is likely achieved through the combined activity of ductile shear zones and brittle faults. While extensional detachments responsible for the latest stages of exhumation are being increasingly recognized, rift-related shear zones have never been sampled in ODP sites and have only rarely been identified in fossil distal margins preserved in orogenic belts. Here we report evidence of the Jurassic multi-stage crustal thinning preserved in the Santa Lucia nappe (Alpine Corsica), where amphibolite facies shearing persisted into the rift to drift transition. In this nappe, Lower Permian meta-gabbros to meta-gabbro-norites of the Mafic Complex are separated from Lower Permian granitoids of the Diorite–Granite Complex by a 100–250 m wide shear zone. Fine-grained syn-kinematic andesine + Mg-hornblende assemblages in meta-tonalites of the Diorite–Granite Complex indicate shearing at T = 710 ± 40 °C at P < 0.5 GPa, followed by deformation at greenschist facies conditions. 40Ar/39Ar step-heating analyses on amphiboles reveal that shearing at amphibolite facies conditions possibly began at the Triassic–Jurassic boundary and persisted until t < 188 Ma, with the Mafic Complex cooling rapidly at the footwall of the Diorite–Granite Complex at ca. 165.4 ± 1.7 Ma.Final exhumation to the basin floor was accommodated by low-angle detachment faulting, responsible for the 1–10 m thick damage zone locally capping the Mafic Complex. The top basement surface is onlapped at a low angle by undeformed Mesozoic sandstone, locally containing clasts of footwall rocks. Existing constraints from the neighboring Corsica ophiolites suggest an age of ca. 165–160 Ma for these final stages of exhumation of the Santa Lucia basement.These results imply that middle to lower crustal rocks can be cooled and exhumed rapidly in the last stages of rifting, when significant crustal thinning is accommodated in less than 5 Myr through the consecutive activity of extensional shear zones and detachment faults. High thermal gradients may delay the switch from ductile shear zone- to detachment-dominated crustal thinning, thus preventing the exhumation of middle and lower crustal rocks until the final stages of rifting.

• New finding of a rift-related shear zone accommodating crustal thinning in a distal continental margin.
• New finding of a detachment fault accommodating the last stages of basement exhumation at the seafloor.
• First example of ductile shearing at amphibolite facies conditions lasting until the rift-to-drift transition.
• Sections of distal continental margins can be exhumed and cooled very rapidly in the last stages of rifting.