Dr Peter Treloar, Kingston University
Minerals are more than just the building blocks of rocks. Analysis of their chemistry, their textures and of the solid and fluid inclusions contained within them will document the evolution of the rocks that host them. Modern analytical techniques now make possible the rapid collection of precise data which enable us to drill down into petrological and structural histories. In this talk I will use two case studies. In the first, mineralogy of metamorphic rocks from the High Himalaya of North Pakistan have allowed us to deduce precise geochronologically constrained Pressure-Temperature-Strain-Time paths for orogeny which leads to a discussion of rapid rates of regional metamorphism. In the second, mineral chemistries and textures together with fluid inclusion and stable isotope analysis of gold deposits from West Africa enable us to challenge the metamorphic fluid paradigm for orogenic gold deposits.