Résumé
Extension of continental lithosphere occurs in continental rifts, such as the East African, Baikal and Rio Grande rifts, and active convergent continental margins, such as in the Himalayas and the Alps. While the mechanisms of crustal thinning are increasingly understood, the processes governing the thinning of the lithospheric subcontinental mantle still remain barely constrained. Detailed structural and petrological mapping associated with a thorough microstructural study in the Beni Bousera orogenic peridotite (Rif Belt, N Morocco) allows constraining the tectono-metamorphic evolution produced by exhumation of the subcontinental lithospheric mantle in a lithospheric-scale shear zone. The Beni Bousera massif is composed by four tectono-metamorphic domains showing consistent kinematics, marked by a pervasive shallowly-dipping foliation bearing a NW-SE stretching lineation, which progressively rotates towards a N20-N30 trend in the NE, lowermost part of the massif. From top to bottom: garnet-spinel mylonites, Ariegite subfacies fine-grained porphyroclastic spinel peridotites, Ariegite-Seiland subfacies porphyroclastic- and Seiland subfacies coarse-porphyroclastic to coarse-granular spinel peridotites. Microstructures and crystal preferred orientations (CPO) in the four domains are consistent with deformation by dominant dislocation creep, but the continuous increase in average olivine grain size and decrease in the recrystallized volume fraction indicate decreasing work rates from top to bottom. The microstructures are consistent with the variation in synkinematic pressure and temperature conditions, which range from 900 degrees C-2.0 GPa in grt-sp mylonites and 1150 degrees C-1.8 GPa in the Seiland domain. The diffuse compositional layering as well as the microstructures and CPO in the Seiland domain suggest deformation in presence of melt. Gravitational instabilities due to local melt accumulation may account for the small areas bearing a vertical lineation in this domain. To account for the consistent kinematics and for the large temperature gradient (ca. 100 degrees C/km) preserved in Beni Bousera, we propose that the massif records the functioning of a lithospheric mantle transtensional shear zone, arrested at a depth of 60 km. In this scenario, partial melting in the Ariegite-Seiland and Seiland domains results from decompression and does not require an exotic heat source.