Geology and origin of Meatiq Dome, Egypt: A Precambrian metamorphic core complex?

Meatiq Dome, a metamorphic complex in the Precambrian basement of the Eastern Desert of Egypt, exhibits many of the essential features of Cordilleran metamorphic core complexes. It is an antiformal structure with low-dipping foliation and unidirectional mineral-slickenside lineation. The core consists of granite gneiss and is conformably overlain by a heterogeneous, isoclinally folded, mylonitic carapace. The carapace grades upward into a nonmylonitic cover of low-grade ophiolitic rocks. The mylonitic rocks are interpreted to have formed in a low-angle ductile shear zone during a compressional tectonic event accompanied by syntectonic intrusion of tonalite. Doming postdated mylonitization. The absence of a brittle detachment surface at Meatiq Dome is its primary distinction from the otherwise similar Cordilleran complexes.