Shear zones are areas of intense deformation that localize the movement of one block of the crust with respect to another. In previous posts, we have seen that shear zones contain some very deformed rocks called mylonites, lineations that tell us the direction of movement, and useful kinematic indicators, such as S-C fabrics, that allow …[Read More]
As we have seen in previous Features from the field posts, structural fabrics are both informative and spectacular. But many structural geologists will list a shear zone fabric, such as mylonite, as their favourite! As Samuele, Hannah and I wrote in a previous post, shear zones are regions of intense deformation where rocks have accommodated …[Read More]
Following the impact of the global plate kinematics revolution, researchers in the 70s and 80s made significant efforts to compare records of deformed rocks in outcrops to large-scale deformation and kinematics. By publishing “S-C Mylonites” 1984, Gordon A. Lister and Arthur W. Snoke gave a step forward for the TS community. The paper contributed to …[Read More]
The San Andreas Fault in California, the Alpine Fault in New Zealand, or the Main Frontal Thrust in the Himalayas are some of the most famous and largest fault zones that accommodate the relative displacement between two adjacent crustal blocks. Such faults, however, represent only the shallower expression of something much bigger: a crustal shear …[Read More]
The paper “Fault Rocks and Fault Mechanisms” by R. H. Sibson (1977), was one of the first studies that established major connections between the rocks that form in faults, and their conditions and mechanics during formation at crustal scale. Concretely, Sibson (1977) established: 1.) links among the textures and lithologies that develop along fault zones …[Read More]
“Summer break is over, which means we will continue with our Minds over Methods blogs! For this edition we invited Andrew Cross to write about his experiments with a new rock deformation device – the Large Volume Torsion (LVT) apparatus. Andrew is currently working as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Earth and …[Read More]
