Metamorphosed melange terrane in the eastern Piedmont of North Carolina

The Falls Lake melange crops out in the eastern Piedmont of North Carolina between the Carolina slate belt and the Raleigh belt. The melange is composed of mafic and ultramafic blocks and pods of diverse shapes and sizes, dispersed without apparent stratigraphic continuity, in a matrix of pelitic schist and biotite-muscovite-plagioclase-quartz gneiss. Textures and structural relationships suggest formation by a combination of sedimentary and tectonic processes, perhaps in the accretionary wedge of a convergent plate margin. The Falls Lake melange and the overlying late Proterozoic to Early Cambrian volcanic-arc terrane of the Carolina slate belt were thrust upon a probable continental terrane of the Raleigh belt before overprinting by late Paleozoic folding and metamorphism.