Abstract
AT least 15 separate localities for sapphirine-bearing rocks have been found in the Arunta Block, a Precambrian metamorphic complex in central Australia (Fig. 1), although only two have been documented in any detail1–3. Such rocks are the most spectacular examples of a suite of rocks with a distinctive, characteristic chemistry. This suite includes, inter alia, the better known cordierite–anthophyllite rocks, and is widely distributed both within the Arunta Block and world-wide. From field observations it is proposed here that two different geological processes, one sedimentary or diagenetic and the other volcanic, generated rocks that are now indistinguishable in their whole-rock chemistry and mineral assemblages. It had formerly been proposed that sapphirine-bearing rocks of volcanogenic and sedimentary origins were mineralogically and chemically distinct4.
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WARREN, R. Sapphirine-bearing rocks with sedimentary and volcanogenic protoliths from the Arunta Block. Nature 278, 159–161 (1979). https://doi.org/10.1038/278159a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/278159a0
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