Conclusions
Though the main geological events recorded by these Massifs are similar, a few of the events documented in the Mont Blanc-Aiguilles Rouges and Maures-Tanneron have not yet been documented in the Argentera Massif. In particular, the Late Proterozoic emplacement of granitoids in a (meta-) sedimentary sequence documented in the Maures and the Late Ordovician granite plutonism documented in the Mont Blanc Massif, still await to be confirmed by geochronological data. Field observations generally support the occurrence of these magmatic events in the Argentera. On the other hand, the age of the HP metamorphic event documented by eclogites and HP granulites found in all the massifs is well constrained so far only in the GSV Terrane of the Argentera Massif.
A discussion of tectonic models for the Variscan belt of the Western Alps and Provence is outside the scope of this review. However, the recent geochronological data from the Argentera Massif (Rubatto et al., 2010) link together in a single orogenic cycle the HP and amphibolite-facies metamorphisms and suggest that the evolution of the Variscan belt may resemble that of present-day collisional settings, such as the Himalayan belt. Similarities between the Variscan and the Himalayan orogenies include the conditions of HP granulite-facies metamorphism, and the rapid (within 20 Ma) succession of HP peak metamorphism, fast exhumation and widespread late anatexis. Further petrological, structural and geochronological investigations, however, are needed to explore this hypothesis and properly place the Argentera Massif in the framework of the South Variscan belt.