Shear sense

Investigation of microstructural relationships in major movement zones in metamorphic rocks, where the sense of displacement is known from regional geological relationships, indicates numerous problems with current concepts of shear‐sense criteria and their application. The direction of apparent shearing commonly conflicts from one criterion to another (e.g. from the symmetry of quartz c ‐axis orientation diagrams to the asymmetry of extensional crenulation cleavages). This implies that interpretations of shear sense along foliations from some mesoscale and microscale criteria have been erroneous. A new approach to interpreting shear sense, involving the use of strain fields, resolves conflicts in mesoscopic and microscopic criteria and provides a method for determining coherent shear‐sense histories extending back before the last shearing event for ‘any foliated metamorphic rock’. It also provides a powerful tool for determining the structural/metamorphic path that a rock has followed within an orogen. For determination of the shear sense on the last foliation developed in a rock, this approach uses geometries developed around competent heterogeneities such as quartz pebbles, pegmatite pods, veins, porphyroclasts, porphyroblasts and breccia clasts. A shear‐sense history is derived by applying this approach to earlier foliations preserved within the heterogeneities and their strain shadows.