Carbonate melting and peperite formation at the intrusive contact between large mafic dykes and clastic sediments of the upper Palaeozoic Saint‐Jules Formation, New‐Carlisle, Quebec

The base of an upper Palaeozoic graben‐fill in eastern Canada was affected by mafic dyke intrusions shortly after deposition, resulting in the formation of peperite. Complex magma–sediment interactions occurred as the melts mingled with the wet and poorly consolidated clastic material of this sedimentary basin, which is separated from underlying rocks by the Acadian unconformity (Middle Devonian). As a result of these interactions, the mafic rocks are strongly oxidized, albitized and autobrecciated near and above the unconformity, where blocky juvenile clasts of mafic glass and porphyritic basalt have mingled with molten or fluidized sediments of the upper Palaeozoic Saint‐Jules Formation, forming a peperite zone several metres thick. In contrast to most peperite occurrences, the New‐Carlisle peperites are associated with the tip of dykes rather than with the sides of sills or dykes. We argue that more heat can be concentrated above a dyke than above a sill, as the former provides a more efficient and focused pathway for heated waters to invade the poorly consolidated host sediments. Superheated groundwaters that issued from the sides of the dykes appear to have promoted melting of carbonate components in calcareous sedimentary rock clasts of the Saint‐Jules Formation, locally generating carbonate melts that contributed to the mingling of juvenile and sedimentary clasts in the peperite. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.