Monazite is a common accessory mineral in high grade meta sediments. The U-Pb isotope systems in monazite have a relatively high closure temperature (relative to isotope diffusion) and thus are amenable to dating metamorphic events with very high precision. It is proposed to apply U-Pb dating of monazites to a sequence of increasingly more strongly metamorphosed sediments in New England to determine ages of peak metamorphism in a series of accretionary tectonic terranes. This work will help constrain the tectonic history of the area. Detailed studies of the behavior of U-Pb systematics in these rocks and in monazite inclusions within different generations of metamorphic minerals will be attempted to test the dating resolution of the method.
