The North Tea Lake Mylonite Zone is a late extensional ductile fault that is concordant with and has reworked fabrics of the North Tea Lake Shear Zone, the frontal thrust shear zone of the upper amphibolite–granulite facies Kiosk domain within the interior of the Central Gneiss Belt. North Tea Lake Mylonite Zone fabric is an anomalously fine-grained mylonite compared to Central Gneiss Belt gneisses, and consists of three microstructural domains that display progressive recrystallization and grain size refinement of the protolith granitoid. On the basis of petrography and electron backscatter diffraction, these microdomains are inferred to represent a transition from dominantly dislocation creep to diffusion creep and diffusion-accommodated grain boundary sliding at elevated stress (>100 MPa), low fluid activity, and temperatures ∼500 °C. The North Tea Lake Mylonite Zone is interpreted to mark a step in the progressive transition in deformation mode during late- to post-Ottawan extension and cooling of the Grenville orogen from weak, wide, wet, and warm shear zones to Rigolet-phase cooler, narrow, ultrafine, high-stress shear zones reworking dry protoliths.

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