Continental Subduction and Subduction Initiation Leading to Extensional Exhumation of Ultra-High Pressure Rocks During Ongoing Plate Convergence in Papua New Guinea

Subduction of continental rocks is necessary to produce ultra-high pressure (UHP) rocks but the mechanism bringing them to the surface is disputed. A major question is whether this involves fairly small diapirs of crust that move up through the mantle or it involves an entire subducted plate that undergoes coherent ‘reverse subduction’ (sometimes called ‘eduction’). Both mechanisms have been invoked to explain the only known region of on-going exhumation of UHP rocks, on the D’Entrecasteaux Islands of Papua New Guinea. Ductile flow fabrics in the island rocks have been used to argue for a diapiric model while constraints on the plate kinematics of the region require relatively large (>100 km) amounts of recent (>6 Myr) extension, supporting eduction as a primary mechanism.

A self-consistent thermo-mechanical model of continental subduction shows that eduction can be accompanied by some ductile flow within the crust. Also we show, that subduction and stacking of continental crust can cause a subduction zone to lock up and lead to subduction initiation elsewhere. When this happens the region of earlier continental subduction can reverse direction causing exhumation of rocks from depth of ~100 km followed by localized extension and plate spreading. This can occur even if a region is in overall convergence. Applied to New Guinea our results are consistent with earlier suggestions that extension of the Woodlark Basin was caused by the initiation of the New Britain Trench, as indicated on the attached figure. We suggest that this subduction initiation event triggered eduction that led to exposure of the D’Entrcasteaux Islands and exhumation of the UHP rocks there. Our numerical results are broadly consistent with the recently refined seismic structure of the region around the islands. The model implies that the present-day basement of the ~70 km wide Goodenough Bay, south of the islands, was subducted then exhumed. This can be tested by drilling.