Morphological and chemical studies on zircon grains from gabbro and granite of the Pingtan magmatic complex, Fujian Province, eastern China, show that there are three stages of zircon growth. The early stage of zircon growth is characterized by colorlessness, high transparence and birefringence, low and dispersive Ipr and Ipy, weak and homogeneous BSE brightness, lower Hf content and depletion of U, Th and Y; the middle stage is characterized by abruptly increasing lpy, progressively strong and sectoral-zoning BSE brightness, higher Hf content and enrichment of U, Th and Y with Th/U 〉 1; the late stage of growth is characterized by brownish color, poor transparence, low birefringence, highest Ipr and Ipy, middle and oscillatorily-zoning BSE brightness, highest contents of Hf, U and Y with Th/U 〈 1. The stages are considered to be formed in a deep magma chamber, ascent passage and emplacement site, respectively. Due to the more or less long residual time of the magma chamber, the difference in age between the early and late stages of zircon might be great enough to be distinguished, which can be attributed to tectonic constraint for the magnlatism.
Many late intrusive granites with strongly peraluminous composition and fine-grained tex-ture occur as stocks or apophysis in the Dadongshan main intrusive granite located in NW Guang-dong Province. This paper reports the results of a petrogenetic study of some characteristic minerals (zircon, muscovite and andalusite) from the Zhutishi granite, one of the late intrusive granites in the Dadongshan granite. It is observed that the typological pattern of zircon population in the Zhutishi granite differs significantly from that in the Dadongshan granite, and that muscovite and andalusite, only found in the Zhutishi granite, are of magmatic origin. Therefore, this paper considers that the Zhutishi granite was unlike to be produced through crystal fractionation from the Dadongshan granitic magma as reported by previous authors, but is related closely to the formation of the Dadongshan granite. The hydrothermal fluid, produced by differentiation of the Dadongshan granitic magma at deep magmatic chamber, would penetrate into the source rock of the Zhutishi granite, and make it enriched in H2O and Al2O3; and the decompression after the ascent of the Dadongshan granitic magma in extension regime promotes partial melting of the source rock of the Zhutishi granite, and produces the strongly peraluminous granitic magma. The model proposed in this paper seems to be more reasonable to explain the spacio-temporal relationship between the late intrusive granites with strongly peraluminous feature and the main intrusive granite with metaluminous feature.
