Abstract The Greater Himalayan Sequence (GHS) is one of the major tectonic units of the Himalaya running for more than 2400 km along-strike. It has been considered as a coherent tectonic unit bound by the South Tibetan Detachment (STD) and the Main Central Thrust (MCT). However, thrusts within it have been recognized in several places and have been mainly interpreted as out-of-sequence thrusts being active after the main phase of exhumation of the crystalline unit after the MCT activated. Recent integrated studies allow the recognition of several ductile shear zones in the core of the GHS, with top-to-the-SW-sense of shear (Higher Himalayan Discontinuity (HHD)). U–Th–Pb in situ monazite ages provide ages older than the MCT. Data on pressure and temperature evolution testify that these shear zones affected the tectonometamorphic evolution of the belt and different pressure and temperature conditions were recorded in the hanging wall and footwall of the HHD. The correlation of the WNW–ESE-trending HHD with other discontinuities recognized in the GHS led to the proposal that it is a tectonic feature running for several hundred kilometres, documented at the regional scale dividing the GHS in two different portions.

Abstract This contribution re-examines textural relationships in metapelitic schist from five metamorphic zones separated by four isograds along the west flank of the Frenchman Cap dome in the southeastern Canadian Cordillera. There is a muscovite-out isograd formed by muscovite-dehydration melting in the kyanite-field. Two others, including one coinciding with the muscovite-out isograd, mark the appearance of sillimanite, which was produced along with biotite by garnet breakdown in the presence of melt. Two others mark the disappearance of kyanite: one formed during retrogression, the other coinciding with a shear zone (the Monashee décollement). Only the muscovite-out isograd, therefore, corresponds with the classical definition of an intersection of the topography with a prograde, isogradic-surface. This contribution exemplifies the need to use a descriptive definition of isograd as the trace of a surface across which a specific change in metamorphic mineralogy takes place. It is further proposed to specify their origin whenever possible with terms such as prograde-, retrograde- and structural-isograds. This revised terminology for isograds will improve our understanding of metamorphic terrains by helping to localize cryptic shear zones, gain a better understanding of the retrograde path and put firmer constraints on viable tectonic models.

Abstract This review presents an objective account of metamorphic, microstructural and geochronological studies in the Greater Himalayan Sequence (GHS) and adjacent units in Nepal in the light of recent research. The importance of integrated, multidisciplinary studies is highlighted. A personal view is presented of strategies for determining pressure–temperature evolution, and of petrological processes at the micro scale, particularly in relation to departures from equilibrium and the behaviour of partially-melted rock systems. Evidence has accumulated for the existence within the GHS of a High Himalayan Discontinuity, marked by differences in timing of peak metamorphism in the hanging wall and footwall, and changes in P–T gradients and paths. Whether or not this is a single continuous horizon, it forms at each location the lower boundary to a migmatitic zone capable of ductile flow, and separates the GHS into an upper division in which channel flow may have operated in the interval 25–18 Ma, and a lower division characterized by an inverted metamorphic gradient, and by metamorphic ages that decrease downsection and are best explained by sequential accretion of footwall slices between 20 and 6 Ma. An overall model for extrusion of the GHS is still not resolved.