page_title: Mélange
hierarchical_section_title: Mélange
caption_attribution_description: Melange or breccia from Surf Beach, Narooma, NSW, Australia
context_page_description: In geology, a mélange is a large-scale breccia, a mappable body of rock characterized by a lack of continuous bedding and the inclusion of fragments of rock of all sizes, contained in a fine-grained deformed matrix. The mélange typically consists of a jumble of large blocks of varied lithologies. Both tectonic and sedimentary processes can form mélange.
  Mélange occurrences are associated with thrust faulted terranes in orogenic belts. A mélange is formed in the accretionary wedge above a subduction zone. The ultramafic ophiolite sequences which have been obducted onto continental crust are typically underlain by a mélange. Smaller-scale localized mélanges may also occur in shear or fault zones, where coherent rock has been disrupted and mixed by shearing forces.
  Large-scale melanges formed in active continental margin settings generally consist of altered oceanic crustal material and blocks of continental slope sediments in a sheared mudstone matrix. The mixing mechanisms in such settings may include tectonic shearing forces, ductile flow of a water-charged or deformable matrix, sedimentary action, or some combination of these.
context_section_description: In geology, a mélange is a large-scale breccia, a mappable body of rock characterized by a lack of continuous bedding and the inclusion of fragments of rock of all sizes, contained in a fine-grained deformed matrix. The mélange typically consists of a jumble of large blocks of varied lithologies.  Both tectonic and sedimentary processes can form mélange.
  Mélange occurrences are associated with thrust faulted terranes in orogenic belts.  A mélange is formed in the accretionary wedge above a subduction zone. The ultramafic ophiolite sequences which have been obducted onto continental crust are typically underlain by a mélange.  Smaller-scale localized mélanges may also occur in shear or fault zones, where coherent rock has been disrupted and mixed by shearing forces.
  
  Large-scale melanges formed in active continental margin settings generally consist of altered oceanic crustal material and blocks of continental slope sediments in a sheared mudstone matrix.  The mixing mechanisms in such settings may include tectonic shearing forces, ductile flow of a water-charged or deformable matrix (such as serpentinite), sedimentary action (such as slumping, gravity-flow, and olistostromal action), or some combination of these.  Some larger blocks of rock may be as much as 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) across.
  Before the advent of plate tectonics in the early 1970s, it was difficult to explain mélanges in terms of known geological mechanisms.  A particularly troubling paradox was the occurrence of blueschist blocks (low temperature and high pressure metamorphic rocks) in direct contact with graywacke (a coarse sandstone with lithic fragments) that was deposited in a sedimentary environment.
caption: Melange from Narooma, Australia.
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