The origin of oceanic crust and metabasic rocks protolith, the Luk Ulo Mélange Complex, Indonesia

The Luk Ulo Mélange Complex (LUMC) is composed of tectonic slices of rocks that surrounded by scaly clay matrix. These rocks consist of serpentinite, gabbro, diabase, and basalt, eclogite, blueschist, amphibolite, schist, gneiss, phylite and slate, granite, chert, red limestone, claystone and sandstone. The LUMC was formed since Paleocene to Eocene, gradually uplifted of HP-UHP metabasic-metapelite (P: 20-27kbar; T: 410-628°C) to near surface mixed with hemipelagic sedimentary rocks. The metamorphic rocks were formed during 101-125 Ma (Early Cretaceous) within 70 to 100 km depth and ∼6°C/km thermal gradient. It took about 50-57 Myr for these rocks to reach the near surface during Paleocene-Eocene, with an uplift rate at ∼1.4-1.8 km/year to form the mélange complex. The low thermal gradient was due to subduction of old and cold oceanic crust. The subducted oceanic crust (MORB) as protolith of Cretaceous metabasic rocks must be older than Cretaceous. The data show that the basalt of oceanic crust is Cretaceous (130-81 Ma) comparable to the age of the cherts (Early to Late Cretaceous). Therefore, we consider that neither oceanic crust exposed in LUMC nor all of part of the old oceanic crust is the protolith of LUMC metabasic subducted beneath the Eurasian Plate. These oceanic rocks possibly originated or part of the edge of micro-continental that merged as a part of the LUMC during the collision with the Eurasian margin.