Post-collisional batholiths do contribute to continental growth

Abstract

Post-collisional voluminous silicic magmatism is represented in most orogens across the world in the form of large granodiorite batholiths and minor intermediate and mafic intrusions, postdating 5-30 Ma the age of the collisional paroxysm responsible of the main mountain building events. Post-collisional mafic intrusions are acknowledged as a mechanism that contributes to long-term yet minor continental growth. The silicic magmas forming the large batholiths, however, have been dismissed from the crustal growth discussion due to bias in the conception that they always generate by recycling older lower crustal igneous rocks. Contrary to this, geochemical and isotopic relations together with new experimental data provided in this paper suggest that the post-collisional signature can be reproduced without the implication of a crustal component, supporting a potential common origin for the two suites, intermediate and silicic. That is, both suites can be derived from a metasomatized mantle source, thus representing the injection of largely juvenile material to produce new continental crust. This inference is contextualized within the supercontinent cycle, showing that the timing of post-collisional magmatism accounts for the generation and preservation rates predicted by the existing models, since both reach maximum values in the amalgamation-collisional stage of the supercontinent cycle, rather than in the subduction stage. All together these inferences lead to think that post-Archean, post-collisional magmatism has been significantly underestimated when computing continental crustal growth through time.