The transition between shortening and extensional regimes in central Mexico recorded in the tourmaline veins of the Comanja Granite

In central Mexico, there is a major angular unconformity separating two lithologic groups. Below the unconformity, the rocks display shortening deformation structures produced by the Laramide orogeny, overprinting those shortening structures there are normal faults related to the Cenozoic Basin and Range tectonics. Above the unconformity, the rocks are affected only by the Basin and Range tectonics, displaying mainly normal faults and in minor amount, lateral-oblique faults. We analyzed the Comanja Granite in the Sierra de Guanajuato, it is a large pluton that contains tourmaline veins. The Granite lacks of the shortening structures that pervasively affected the Mesozoic host-rocks; for this reason, we infer that the granite was formed after the main shortening event. We determined that the emplacement of the Comanja Granite took place between 51.0 ± 0.3 Ma and 49.5 ± 0.8 Ma, and that the tourmaline veins of the granite were formed at ∼51.0 Ma. At the microscopic scale, the tourmaline veins contain three kinds of tourmaline, called T1, T2, and T3, according to the order of their formation. The T1 tourmalines are brown colored and appear affected by brittle-ductile (D1) and brittle (D2) deformations. The cataclasites formed during D2 overprinted the brittle-ductile structures of D1, indicating the transition from deeper to shallower levels. In contrast, T2 and T3 tourmalines were not involved in those deformations. At the outcrop scale, we identified two slickensides in the tourmaline veins. The older, related to D1, is strike-slip with a small thrust component and the younger, related to D2, is normal with oblique components. The T1 tourmalines (which are deformed) were formed before the lateral-thrust faulting, whereas the T2 and T3 tourmalines, which are not deformed, were deposited after the faulting occurred in the veins. Our interpretation is that T1 tourmalines were deposited in the later phases of the Comanja Granite emplacement, with the minimum principal compressional stress (σ3) being vertical, whereas the T2 and T3 were formed during the exhumation process of the Comanja Granite, with the minimum principal stress (σ3) being horizontal. We infer that the lateral-thrust faulting represents the transition between the Laramide shortening and the Basin and Range extension in the Sierra de Guanajuato. There are Paleogene intrusive bodies in the southern Mesa Central that were exhumed before the Oligocene. This observation strongly suggests that the uplift of the Sierra de Guanajuato could represent a wide event in the southern Mesa Central of Mexico.