“…Undoubtedly, porphyroblasts record progressive kinematic and metamorphic conditions during orogenesis, and provide useful tools to investigate many geological processes including fold mechanisms, deformation and metamorphic history, and large‐scale bulk shortening directions that can be used in tectonic reconstructions. Correlation of these microstructural features with deformation and metamorphic events and tectonic movements across a geological terrain was not possible prior to development of techniques for measuring FIAs within porphyroblasts [ Powell and Treagus , 1967, 1970; Rosenfeld , 1968] (for earlier methods); [ Hayward , 1990; Bell et al , 1995, 1998, 2003; Yeh , 2003]. Measurement of FIAs provides quantitative data that time and link foliations, overprinting foliation asymmetries, successive phases of mineral growth, metamorphism, deformation and bulk tectonic movement directions [e.g., Bell and Mares , 1999; Bell et al , 2003, 2004].…”