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The Patagonian Andes record a period of Cretaceous‐Neogene orogenesis that began with the compressional inversion of a Late Jurassic rift called the Rocas Verdes basin. Detrital zircon ages from sediment that filled the southern part of the basin provide a maximum depositional age of ∼148 Ma, suggesting that the basin opened approximately simultaneously along its length during the Late Jurassic. Structural data and U‐Pb isotopic ages on zircon from granite plutons near the Beagle Channel (55°S) show that basin inversion involved two stages of shortening separated by tens of millions of years. An initial stage created a small (∼60 km wide) thrust wedge that placed the basaltic floor of the Rocas Verdes basin on top of adjacent continental crust prior to ∼86 Ma. Structures and metamorphic mineral assemblages preserved in an exhumed middle to lower crustal shear zone in Cordillera Darwin suggest that this obduction was accompanied by south directed subduction of the basaltic crust and underthrusting of continental crust to depths of ∼35 km beneath a coeval volcanic arc. A subsequent stage of out‐of‐sequence thrusting, culminating in the Paleogene, shortened basement and Upper Jurassic igneous rock in the internal part of the belt by at least ∼50 km, forming a bivergent thrust wedge. This latter period coincided with the exhumation of rocks in Cordillera Darwin and expansion of the fold‐thrust belt into the Magallanes foreland basin. This orogen provides an important example of how orogenesis initiated and led to continental underthrusting and obduction of basaltic crust during closure of a quasi‐oceanic rift basin.

Granulite facies orthogneiss of the Arthur River Complex (ARC) at Milford Sound, western Fiordland records a complex Early Cretaceous magmatic and orogenic history for the Pacific Gondwana margin that culminated in the emplacement and burial of a dioritic batholith, the Western Fiordland Orthogneiss (WFO). Enstatite‐bearing mafic to intermediate protoliths of the ARC and WFO intruded the middle to upper crust. The early deformation history of the ARC is preserved in the Pembroke Granulite, where two‐pyroxene S1 assemblages that reflect P<8 kbar and T >750 °C were only patchily recrystallized during later deformation. S1 is cut by garnet‐bearing, leucogabbroic to dioritic veins, which are cut by distinctive D2 fractures involving anorthositic veins and garnet–diopside–plagioclase‐bearing reaction zones. These zones are widespread in the ARC and WFO and record conditions of P≈14 kbar and T >750 °C. Garnet–clinopyroxene‐bearing corona reaction textures that mantle enstatite in both the ARC and WFO reflect Early Cretaceous burial by approximately 25 km of continental crust. Most of the ARC is formed from the Milford and Harrison Gneisses, which contain steeply dipping S4 assemblages that envelop the Pembroke Granulite and involve garnet, hornblende, diopside, clinozoisite, rutile and plagioclase, with or without kyanite. The P–T history of rocks in western Fiordland reflects pronounced Early Cretaceous convergence‐related tectonism and burial, possibly related to the collision and accretion of island arc material onto the Pacific Gondwana margin.

Granulite facies gabbroic and dioritic gneisses in the Pembroke Valley, Milford Sound, New Zealand, are cut by vertical and planar garnet reaction zones in rectilinear patterns. In gabbroic gneiss, narrow dykes of anorthositic leucosome are surrounded by fine‐grained garnet granulite that replaced the host two‐pyroxene hornblende granulite at conditions of 750 °C and 14 kbar. Major and trace element whole‐rock geochemical data indicate that recrystallization was mostly isochemical. The anorthositic veins cut contacts between gabbroic gneiss and dioritic gneiss, but change in morphology at the contacts, from the anorthositic vein surrounded by a garnet granulite reaction zone in the gabbroic gneiss, to zones with a septum of coarse‐grained garnet surrounded by anorthositic leucosome in the dioritic gneiss. The dioritic gneiss also contains isolated garnet grains enclosed by leucosome, and short planar trains of garnet grains linked by leucosome. Partial melting of the dioritic gneiss, mostly controlled by hornblende breakdown at water‐undersaturated conditions, is inferred to have generated the leucosomes. The form of the leucosomes is consistent with melt segregation and transport aided by fracture propagation; limited retrogression suggests considerable melt escape. Dyking and melt escape from the dioritic gneiss are inferred to have propagated fractures into the gabbroic gneiss. The migrating melt scavenged water from the surrounding gabbroic gneiss and induced the limited replacement by garnet granulite.

[1] Uncommonly long-lived subduction and variable plate geometry along the South American Andean Plate margin resulted in diverse relationships between magmatic flux and extensional and contractional deformation, as recorded by the overriding continental plate. Convergence velocities, absolute overriding plate velocities, and subducting slab ages were resolved along the trench from 170 Ma to the present using a recently developed kinematic global plate model to identify any relationship between subduction conditions, deformation style, and magmatic features in the overriding plate. Key correlations reflect the dependence of macroscopic crustal strain style on subduction mechanism and relative plate vectors. Extensional back-arc basins involving mafic/oceanic crust developed only when the overriding plate velocity of South America was directed away from the trench and the modeled age of the subducting slab was older than 50 Myr. The development of fold and thrust belts, and uplift of major plateaus, was accompanied by trench normal convergence velocities in excess of 4 cm/yr. Parameters investigated in this study revealed no correlation with the timing of major magmatic events, nor was any correlation observed with the structural style of fold and thrust belts.

The 600‐km‐long Magallanes fault zone and the newly discovered 100‐km‐long Deseado fault zone represent large but little understood segments of the South American‐Scotia (SAM‐SCO) transform on the South American continent (∼50–56° S latitude). Kinematic analyses of fault populations near Mount Hope on Tierra del Fuego indicate that these fault zones have accommodated sinistral strike‐slip motion with a probable component of normal slip on vertical‐subvertical faults during Cenozoic time. Regional geological data and overprinting relationships between the strike‐slip/oblique‐slip faults and mid‐Cretaceous to Oligocene contractional structures suggest that sinistral motion in the Mount Hope segments of the two fault zones occurred significantly since ∼60 Ma and dominantly since ∼30 Ma with the most recent episode of activity occurring during the Quaternary. Results from mapping show 20–25 km of cumulative sinistral separation of a thrust contact across a well‐exposed segment of the Magallanes fault zone north and east of Mount Hope. Although the exact amount of displacement accommodated by this segment of the Magallanes fault zone remains uncertain, the 20–25 km of cumulative sinistral separation combined with an estimate of 3 km of vertical separation is consistent with small magnitudes of displacement of the order of tens of kilometers. This result apparently contrasts with predictions based on plate reconstructions that large amounts of strike‐slip displacement (>200 km) have been accommodated internally within southernmost South America since early Cenozoic time. A low magnitude of displacement along the Mount Hope segment of the Magallanes fault zone suggests that (1) strike‐slip motion has been partitioned across the continent since about 30 Ma and/or (2) the Mount Hope segment of the Magallanes fault zone represents a young part of the modern plate boundary that migrated to its present location during the last few million years.

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The western Fiordland Orthogneiss (WFO) is an extensive composite metagabbroic to dioritic arc batholith that was emplaced at c. 20-25 km crustal depth into Palaeozoic and Mesozoic gneiss during collision and accretion of the arc with the Mesozoic Pacific Gondwana margin. Sensitive high-resolution ion microprobe U-Pb zircon data from central and northern Fiordland indicate that WFO plutons were emplaced throughout the early Cretaceous (123.6 ± 3.0, 121.8 ± 1.7, 120.0 ± 2.6 and 115.6 ± 2.4 Ma). Emplacement of the WFO synchronous with regional deformation and collisionalstyle orogenesis is illustrated by (i) coeval ages of a post-D1 dyke (123.6 ± 3.0 Ma) and its host pluton (121.8 ± 1.7 Ma) at Mt Daniel and (ii) coeval ages of pluton emplacement and metamorphism/ deformation of proximal paragneiss in George and Doubtful Sounds. The coincidence emplacement and metamorphic ages indicate that the WFO was regionally significant as a heat source for amphibolite to granulite facies metamorphism. The age spectra of detrital zircon populations were characterized for four paragneiss samples. A paragneiss from Doubtful Sound shows a similar age spectrum to other central Fiordland and Westland paragneiss and SE Australian Ordovician sedimentary rocks, with age peaks at 600-500 and 1100-900 Ma, a smaller peak at c. 1400 Ma, and a minor Archean component. Similarly, one sample of the George Sound paragneiss has a significant Palaeozoic to Archean age spectrum, however zircon populations from the George Sound paragneiss are dominated by PermoTriassic components and thus are markedly different from any of those previously studied in Fiordland.