Résumé
Sub-continental lithospheric mantle rocks are exhumed at the foot of magma-poor distal passive margins as aresponse to extreme stretching of the continental crust during plate separation. Remnants of the Northern Iberianpaleo-passive margin are now exposed in the North-Pyrenean Zone (NPZ) and represent field analogues to studythe processes of continental crust thinning and subcontinental mantle exhumation. The NPZ results from theinversion of basins opened between the Iberia and Europa plates during Albo-Cenomanian times. In the westernNPZ, the ‘Chaînons Béarnais’ ranges display a fold-and-thrust structure involving the Mesozoic sedimentarycover, decoupled from its continental basement and associated with peridotite bodies in tectonic contact withPalaeozoic basement lenses of small size. Continental extension developed under hot thermal conditions, asdemonstrated by the syn-metamorphic Cretaceous ductile deformation affecting both the crustal basement and theallochthonous Mesozoic cover.In this study, we present structural and geochemical data providing constraints to reconstruct the evolution ofthe northern Iberia paleo-margin. Field work confirms that the pre-rift Mesozoic cover is intimately associatedto mantle rocks and to thin tectonic lenses of crustal basement. It also shows that the pre-rift cover was detachedfrom its bedrock at the Keuper evaporites level and was welded to mantle rocks during their exhumation atthe foot of the hyper-extended margin. The crust/mantle detachment fault is a major shear zone characterizedby anastomosed shear bands defining a plurimetric phacoidal fabric at the top of the serpentinized mantle. Thedetachment is marked by a layer of metasomatic rocks, locally 20 meters thick, made of talc-chlorite-pyrite-richrocks that developped under greenschist facies conditions. Raman Spectroscopy on Carbonaceous Materials(RSCM), performed on the Mesozoic cover reveal that the entire sedimentary pile underwent temperatures rangingbetween 200C and 480C.We show that: (i) at the site of mantle rocks exhumation, the boudinaged pre-rift sediments have undergone drasticsyn-metamorphic thinning with the genesis of a S0/S1 foliation and, (ii) the Paleozoic basement has been ductilelydeformed, into thin tectonic lenses that remained welded to the exhumed mantle rocks. Therefore the overallcrustal rheology appears dominated by shallow levels having a ductile behavior. This rheology is related to thepresence of a thick pre- and syn-rift decoupled cover acting as an efficient thermal blanket. This new geologicaldata set highlights important characteristics of ductile-type hyper-extended passive margin that cannot be obtainedfrom the study of seismic lines. Finally, we stress that studying field analogues represents a major tool to betterunderstand the mechanisms of extreme crustal thinning associated with mantle exhumation and their structuralinheritance during tectonic inversion.