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Armalcolite-bearing Fe-Ti oxide assemblages in graphite-equilibrated salic volcanic rocks with native iron from Disko, central West Greenland

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Abstract

Native iron-bearing strongly sediment-contaminated andesitic to dacitic lavas from the Maligât Formation on Disko contain an early phenocryst assemblage of plagioclase, low-Ca pyroxene(s) and ilmenite. The phenocrystic ilmenite has reacted to form complex Fe-Ti oxide-metal-sulphide aggregates, which contain one or more of the oxides ilmenite, armalcolite and rutile. The armalcolite is very similar to the lunar type 1 armalcolite of Haggerty (1973) and approximate compositionally the ternary system FeTi2O5-MgTi2O5-Ti3O5 (92 to 97 mol.%). When evidence from several salic rocks is combined the Fe-Ti oxide-metal-sulphide aggregates display reactions which may represent one isobaric invariant assemblage (ilmenite-armalcolite-rutile-iron) and the 3 boundary univariant reactions in the system Fe-Ti-O. The compositional and textural features of ferro-magnesian silicates, oxides and metals show that most rocks were affected by a rapidly declining f O 2 during magma ascent and cooling, as displayed in the Fe-Ti oxide-metal-sulphide aggregates by the cross-cutting of one or several T—f O 2 buffer curves in the system Fe-Ti-O. Prominent sulphidation reactions are observed in the oxide aggregates and are always of the type where FeO in oxide is replaced by FeS while the liberated oxygen is consumed in a reduction process. Carbon, bound as graphite or cohenite, occurs throughout the rocks and is mostly enclosed in phenocrysts and xenocrysts. When the salic magmas ascended from pre-eruption reservoirs at 1 to 1.5 kb the reduction was largely controlled by strongly pressure-dependent carbon-oxygen equilibria resulting in rapidly declining T—f O 2 paths recorded by the oxide assemblages. In the simplified C-O gas system carbon-barometry (Sato 1979) applied to the selected rocks would indicate final equilibrium pressures of between 10 and 100 bars. The scarcity of preserved graphite in the lavas would suggest that the carbon-controlled reductions were terminated when available carbon was exhausted during the magma ascent and solidification.

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  1. Geologisk Museum, Øster Voldgade 5-7, DK-1350, København K., Denmark

    A. K. Pedersen

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Pedersen, A.K. Armalcolite-bearing Fe-Ti oxide assemblages in graphite-equilibrated salic volcanic rocks with native iron from Disko, central West Greenland. Contr. Mineral. and Petrol. 77, 307–324 (1981). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00371560

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