Fold interference pattern at the top of basement domes and apparent vertical extrusion of HP rocks (Ambin and South Vanoise massifs, Western Alps)

The Ambin and South Vanoise Briançonnais basement domes, located within the HP metamorphic zone, were chosen for a reappraisal of the early tectonic evolution of the Internal Alps in their western segment. Finite strain analyses have shown that HP rocks were exhumed in two main successive stages, more or less expressed according to their structural position in the massifs. A partitioning of deformation, from core to rim of the domes, is thus evidenced. The D1 stage was roughly coeval with the observed peak metamorphic conditions and corresponds in the core of the Ambin dome, to a non-coaxial regime with dominant horizontal shortening and N to NW movement direction. The D2 stage, well-expressed in the upper part of the domes, took place under low-blueschist facies conditions and culminated under greenschist facies conditions. It developed a retrogressive foliation and pervasive E-verging shear-zones at all scales that locally define major Φ2 tectonic contacts. The D2 shearing is responsible for the development of spectacular F1–F2 fold interference structures recognised in the western part of the South Vanoise dome. In this area, we interpret the steeply-dipping HP-fabric (S1) defining the axial planes of the first generation of now-upright folds (F1) as linked to an early flat-lying nappe edifice (Φ1) subsequently steepened by the D2 shearing. Geometry and kinematic characteristics for the early D1 nappe-forming event are strongly consistent with most evolutionary models assuming that oceanic to European and Apulian crust-derived nappes were initially exhumed during N to NW-verging overthrusting events, synthetic to the subduction. They tend also to suggest that the Penninic HP-units may have suffered an early exhumation by low-angle thrusting, rather than by vertical extrusion.