Thermal evolution and interaction between impact melt sheet and footwall: A genetic model for the contact sublayer of the Sudbury Igneous Complex, Canada

The Sudbury Igneous Complex (SIC) and associated Ni‐Cu‐PGE mineralization has been interpreted in terms of a large meteorite impact event. In this study, the thermal relationship between the large cooling melt sheet and the surrounding country rock is examined in terms of its role in an evolving thermal gradient rather than as a passive receptacle for the melt sheet above. Thermal modeling of this environment is undertaken using physical and thermal constraints appropriate to the SIC and assuming heat dissipation from the 2.5‐km‐thick superheated melt sheet (≥1800°C) by either diffusion with zero convection or by rapid convection within the melt sheet. With zero convection, basal cooling produces a solid base, which lowers conductivity such that the immediate footwall rocks reach ≤1000°C, producing partial melting that extends 200 m into the footwall. In a rapidly convecting melt sheet the initial footwall chill is remelted and high temperatures maintained within the sheet close to the contact. This results in higher temperatures being attained in the immediate footwall (1100–1200°C), inducing complete melting of proximal footwall and partial melting to depths of 500 m below the melt sheet. Proximal footwall consists of Paleoproterozoic Huronian basalts, granitoids and sediments, exposed in the south range, overlying Archaean gneisses and granitoids. Total and partial melting of this material early in the cooling history of the melt sheet and the subsequent gravitational accommodation of these melts according to density would produce a basalt‐dominated basal liquid corresponding to the so‐called contact sublayer. The thermal aureole predicted by our models is consistent with that preserved around the north range of the SIC assuming ∼800 m of thermally induced erosion at the contact.