HR: 0800h
AN: V51B-0526 [Abstracts]
TI: Limitations on the Estimation of Parental Magma Temperature Using Olivine-melt Equilibria: Hotspots Not
So Hot
AU: * Natland, J H
EM: jnatland@rsmas.miami.edu
AF: RSMAS/MGG University of Miami, 4600 Rickenbacker Causeway, Miami, FL 33149
United States
AB:
Estimates of temperatures of magmas parental to picritic tholeiites using olivine-melt equilibria and FeO-MgO relationships
depend strongly on the assumption that a liquid composition, usually a glass, is related to the most magnesian olivine in the
rock, or to an olivine composition in equilibrium with mantle peridotite, along an olivine-controlled liquid line of
descent. The liquid Fe$^{2+}$/Fe$^{3+}$ also has to be known; where data exist, average values from wet chemical
determinations are used. Crystallization histories of tholeiitic picrites from islands, spreading ridges, and large igneous
provinces, however, usually reveal them to be hybrid rocks that are assembled by two types of magma mixing: 1) between a)
differentiated magmas that are on olivine-plagioclase or olivine-plagioclase-clinopyroxene cotectics and b) crystal sludges
with abundant olivine that may have accumulated from liquids crystallizing olivine alone; and 2) between primitive magma
strains in which olivine crystallized either alone or with other silicate minerals at elevated pressure on separate liquid
lines of descent. Many picrites give evidence that both types of mixing have occurred. If either type has occurred, the
assumption of olivine-control linking a glass and an olivine composition can only circumstantially be correct. Oxidation
state can also be underestimated and therefore FeO contents overestimated if basalts have degassed S, as at Hawaii.
In Case 1, hybrid host glass compositions often have higher FeO at given MgO content than liquids which produced many olivine
crystals in the rock. In Case 2, the separate parental melt strains are revealed by diversity of compositions of both melt
inclusions and Cr-spinel and are most often interpreted to mean local heterogeneity of the mantle source. The inclusions do
not always affirm an olivine-controlled liquid line of descent. Instead, inclusions with $<$13% Al$_{2}$O$_{3}$ are
increasingly interpreted from both major oxides and trace elements to be derived from melt strains produced by partial
melting of both depleted and enriched pyroxenite or recycled ocean-crust (eclogite) (e.g., refs.1 and 2). Some Icelandic
picrites also contain large phenocrysts of plagioclase and clinopyroxene; their abundant olivine evidently resulted from
mechanical processes of concentration of olivine such as flowage differentiation. Using compositions of low-Al2O3 melt
inclusions and host liquids to estimate spinel compositions (ref. 3) reveals many instances of crystallization at higher
oxidation states than occur during MORB crystallization, and successfully predicts presence of spinel with Cr/(Cr+Al) = 60-75
actually found in picrites from Hawaii, Iceland, elsewhere in the North Atlantic Igneous Province, and the komatiites of
Gorgona, but not in MORB. Where fresh glass is lacking (e.g., Gorgona), bulk-rock compositions have been used to reconstruct
conditions of crystallization of parental liquids; but this is greatly complicated by the type and extent of alteration of
the rocks. The consequence of all of these factors is that FeO in presumed olivine-controlled liquids is often overestimated,
thus many estimated temperatures of crystallization of primitive magnesian liquids are too high by as much as 50-100$^{o}$
absolute, and derived potential temperatures consequently are too high by more than this.
(1) Hansteen, T., 1991. Contrib. Mineral. Petrol. 109, 225. (2) Sobolev, A., Hofmann, A., and Nikogosian, I., 2000. Nature,
404, 986. (3) Poustovetov, A., and Roeder, P., 2001, Canad. Mineral. 39, 309.
DE: 3600 MINERALOGY AND PETROLOGY (replaces
DE: 3630 Experimental mineralogy and petrology
DE: 3640 Igneous petrology
DE: 3655 Major element composition
SC: Volcanology, Geochemistry, Petrology [V]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting