Nature of the Mantle Sources and Bearing on Tectonic Evolution in the West Antarctic Rift System
Abstract
We collected samples from subaerial lava flows and dredged some Neogene basanitic lavas from seven volcanic edifices in the Ross Sea, Antarctica - a part of the West Antarctic Rift System (WARS) and one of the world's largest alkaline magmatic provinces - for a study aimed at two principal objectives: (1) Geochemical interrogation of the most primitive magmatic rocks to try and understand the nature of the seismically abnormal mantle domain recently identified beneath the shoulder of the Transantarctic Mountains (TAM), the Ross Sea Embayment and Marie Byrd Land; and (2) Using 40Ar/39Ar geochronology to establish a temporal link between magmatism and tectonism, particularly in the Terror Rift. We have attempted to answer the questions of whether magmatism is due to a hot mantle or wet mantle, and whether rifting in the area triggered magmatic activity or vice versa. Results show that the area does not have an age-progressive hotspot track, and the magmatism post-dates the main phase of extension along the Terror Rift within the WARS, which supports a decompression-melting model without the benefit of a significant thermal anomaly. In fact, preliminary volatile measurements on olivine-hosted melt inclusions have yielded water concentrations in excess of 2 wt%, indicating that flux melting was an important complementary process to decompression melting. The major oxide compositions of lavas in the WARS are best matched to experimental melts of carbonated peridotite, though garnet pyroxenite can also be a minor source. The Pb and Nd isotopic systems are decoupled from each other, suggesting removal of fluid-mobile elements from the mantle source possibly during the long history of subduction along the Paleo-Pacific margin of Gondwana. Extremely unradiogenic 187Os/188Os ranging to as low as 0.1081 ± 0.0001 hints at the involvement of lithospheric components in generation of magmas in the WARS.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2012
- Bibcode:
- 2012AGUFM.T43C2693M
- Keywords:
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- 3621 MINERALOGY AND PETROLOGY / Mantle processes;
- 8178 TECTONOPHYSICS / Tectonics and magmatism;
- 8415 VOLCANOLOGY / Intra-plate processes;
- 9310 GEOGRAPHIC LOCATION / Antarctica