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Magmatic arcs are natural laboratories for studying the growth of continental crusts. The Gangdese arc, southern Tibet, is an archetypal continental magmatic arc that formed due to Mesozoic subduction of the Neo-Tethyan oceanic lithosphere; however, its formation and evolution remain controversial. In this contribution, we combine newly reported and previously published geochemical and geochronological data for Mesozoic magmatic rocks in the eastern Gangdese arc to reveal its magmatic and metamorphic histories and review its growth, thickening, and fractionation and mineralization processes. Our results show that: (1) the Gangdese arc consists of multiple Mesozoic arc-type magmatic rocks and records voluminous juvenile crustal growth. (2) The Mesozoic magmatic rocks experienced Late Cretaceous granulite-facies metamorphism and partial melting, thus producing hydrous and metallogenic element-rich migmatites that form a major component of the lower arc crust and are a potential source for the Miocene ore-hosting porphyries. (3) The Gangdese arc witnessed crustal thickening and reworking during the Middle to Late Jurassic and Late Cretaceous. (4) Crystallization-fractionation of mantle-derived magmas and partial melting of thickened juvenile lower crust induced intracrustal chemical differentiation during subduction. We suggest that the Gangdese arc underwent the following main tectonic, magmatic, and metamorphic evolution processes: normal subduction and associated mantle-derived magmatism during the Late Triassic to Jurassic; shallow subduction during the Early Cretaceous and an associated magmatic lull; and mid-oceanic ridge subduction, high-temperature metamorphism and an associated magmatic flare-up during the early Late Cretaceous, and flat subduction, high-temperature and high-pressure metamorphism, partial melting, and associated crust-derived magmatism during the late Late Cretaceous. Key issues for further research include the temporal and spatial distributions of Mesozoic magmatic rocks, the evolution of the components and compositions of arc crust over time, and the metallogenic processes that occur in such environments during subduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Continental magmatic arcs are characterized by the accretion of voluminous mantle-derived magmatic rocks and the growth of juvenile crust. However, significant volumes of meta-sedimentary rocks occur in the middle and lower arc crust, and the contributions of these rocks to the evolution of arc crust remain unclear. In this paper, we conduct a systematic study of petrology, geochronology, and geochemistry of migmatitic paragneisses from the eastern Gangdese magmatic arc, southern Tibet. The results show that the paragneisses were derived from late Carboniferous greywacke, and underwent an early Cenozoic (69-41 Ma) upper amphibolite-facies metamorphism and partial melting at pressure-temperature conditions of ~11 kbar and ~740 °C, and generated granitic melts with enriched Hf isotopic compositions (anatectic zircon εHf(t) = -10.57 to +0.78). Combined with the existing results, we conclude that the widely distributed meta-sedimentary rocks in the eastern Gangdese arc deep crust have the same protolith ages of late Carboniferous, and record northwestward-decreasing metamorphic conditions. We consider that the deeply buried sedimentary rocks resulted in the compositional change of juvenile lower crust from mafic to felsic and the formation of syn-collisional S-type granitoids. The mixing of melts derived from mantle, juvenile lower crust, and ancient crustal materials resulted in the isotopic enrichment of the syn-collisional arc-type magmatic rocks of the Gangdese arc. We suggest that crustal shortening and underthrusting, and the accretion of mantle-derived magma during the Indo-Asian collision transported the supracrustal rocks to the deep crust of the Gangdese arc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]