Ultra-High Pressure Metamorphism and Geochronology of Garnet Clinopyroxenite in the Paleozoic Dunhuang Orogenic Belt, Northwestern China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors provide an interesting report about the geochemistry and the metamorphic history of pyroxenites enclaves occurring within the granites in the Dunhuang complex. Their purpose is appropriate and constitute a good contribution for the regional geology. They explain exhaustively the methods and they motivated their choices in the discussion, which is in a good shape as well. In my opinion the criticism of this work is the presentation of the results: even if every phase of the work is well documented, the organization is sometime chaotic. Please see my comments in the attached file. Other main comments:
- about the figures: you should have more care of them, as they sum up all that is written in the text. Even if the arguments in the text are generally well reported, if I have a look only to the figure, I am not really attracted by this paper. Please make a careful analysis of my comments.
- about the discussion: it is well exposed and well organized. I am not familiar with this area, and I am wondering if it is possible to compare your study with others sites of the Dunhuang complex.
- about the diagrams related to the geochemistry: I suggest to move part of them (see the comment on the first page of my file) within the main paper: as the work is mainly done in this topic, I think that it is important to give them larger space.
- english should be improved. In my file I noted some suggestions but not all.
Therefore, despite a partial re-organization of the text is needed, for the good quality of this research I suggest to consider it for its publication in Minerals after minor revision.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
All the questions and annotations have been carefully considered, and accordingly, all the revisions have been made.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This is an important paper describing a most unusual instance of a granite with country rock xenoliths composed of very deeply buried rocks which recrystallised under extraordinarily high pressures of up to 41kb but, presumably because of their composition, without diamonds or coesite which are the common indicators of former ultra high pressure. The authors had the difficult task of determining the pressure but they achieved this in several ways after carefully evaluating the available methods & have obtained as good an estimate of the origin and unravelled the quite complicated metamorphic history as I think is possible, even if others might have used slightly different considerations. The implication is that the granite magma was generated below, or just possibly sideways of the high pressure rocks which probably had already started to move upwards only to be carried upwards even quicker by the intruding granite magma.
I have not checked the references for accuracy.
The text is in good English but attention to the following minor points would be worth while:
Line 28 Not in the depth but buried at some depth
Line 59 Not SWW-NEE. English would be WSW-ENE (i.e. 247.5-67.5o )
Line 67 Replace puddings with lumps
Line 69 of a tectonic melange OR of tectonic melanges
Line 79 Fig.1 Explanation E-G. The words on the photo do not stand out very well; a problem not easily resolved so retain the present images which are worth while but make the explanation more helpful. So Fig.1 Explanation E-G. Field images of the Garnet clinopyroxenite replace with Fig.1 Explanation E-F. Field images of dark Garnet clinopyroxenite bands in light colored granite stripes. G.....
Line 466 From the great delete the
Line 489 Replace very approaching with by approaching very near
Line 532 Remove the full stop after Miss
Author Response
All the questions and annotations have been carefully considered, and accordingly, all the revisions have been made.
