Abstract
Rapid rock exhumation in mountain belts is commonly associated with crustal-scale normal faulting during late-orogenic extension. The process of normal faulting advects hot footwall rocks toward Earth’s surface, which shifts isotherms upwards and increases the geothermal gradient. When faulting stops, this process is reversed and isotherms move downwards during thermal relaxation. Owing to these temporal changes of the geothermal gradient, it is not straightforward to derive the history of faulting from mineral cooling ages. Here, we combine thermochronological data with thermokinematic modeling to illustrate the importance of syntectonic heat advection and posttectonic thermal relaxation for a crustal-scale normal fault in the European Alps. The north-south–trending Brenner fault defines the western margin of the Tauern window (Austria) and caused the exhumation of medium-grade metamorphic rocks during Miocene orogen-parallel extension of the Alps. We analyzed samples from a 2-km-thick crustal section, including a 1000-m-long drill core. Zircon and apatite (U-Th)/He ages along this transect increase with elevation from ca. 8 to ca. 10 Ma and from ca. 7 to ca. 9 Ma, respectively, but differ by only ∼1 m.y. in individual samples. Thermokinematic modeling of the ages indicates that the Brenner fault became active at 19 ± 2 Ma and caused 35 ± 10 km of crustal extension, which is consistent with independent geological constraints. The model results further suggest that the fault slipped at a total rate of 4.2 ± 0.9 km/m.y. and became inactive at 8.8 ± 0.4 Ma. Our findings demonstrate that both syntectonic heat advection and posttectonic thermal relaxation are responsible for the cooling pattern observed in the footwall of the Brenner normal fault.
