Abstract
Erosion has revealed a remarkable section through the heart of a volcanic island, Mason Spur, in the southwestern Ross Sea, Antarctica, including an unusually well-exposed section of caldera fill. The near-continuous exposure, 10 km laterally and > 1 km vertically, cuts through Cenozoic alkalic volcanic rocks of the Erebus volcanic province (McMurdo Volcanic Group) and permits the study of an ancient volcanic succession that is rarely available due to subsequent burial or erosion. The caldera filling sequence includes an unusual trachytic spatter-rich lapilli tuff (ignimbrite) facies that is particularly striking because of the presence of abundant black fluidal, dense juvenile spatter clasts of trachytic obsidian up to 2 m long supported in a pale cream-coloured pumiceous lapilli tuff matrix. Field mapping indicates that the deposit is an ignimbrite and, together with petrological considerations, it is suggested that mixing of dense spatter and pumiceous lapilli tuff in the investigated deposit occurred during emplacement, not necessarily in the same vent, with the mixed fragmental material emplaced as a pyroclastic density current. Liquid water was not initially present but a steam phase was probably generated during transport and may represent water ingested during passage of the current as it passed over either wet ground, stream, shallow lake or (possibly) snow. Well-exposed caldera interiors are uncommon and that at Mason Spur is helping understand eruption dynamics associated with a complex large island volcano. The results of our study should help to elucidate interpretations of other, less well exposed, pyroclastic density current deposits elsewhere in Antarctica and globally.
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Acknowledgements
This project was supported by a NZARI Research Project award (NZARI 2016-1-1) and APM is grateful for an Antarctica New Zealand (New Zealand Post) scholarship. The authors are also grateful to all the staff at Scott Base, field assistants Matt Windsor, Benji Nicholson and John Cottle, and Sean Mullally (‘Snow’) and Andrew Hefford (pilots for Southern Lakes Helicopters) for their excellent logistical support during the 2005–2006 and 2016–2017 field seasons when the fieldwork for this project was carried out. We are also very grateful for conversations with Nina Jordan (Leicester University) about the characteristics and style of eruptions of peralkaline felsic ignimbrites and Kelly Russell (University of British Columbia) for his invaluable help calculating viscosities. We thank journal reviewers R. Cas and M. Rosi and associate editor P.-S. Ross for their comments on the manuscript.
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Martin, A.P., Smellie, J.L., Cooper, A.F. et al. Formation of a spatter-rich pyroclastic density current deposit in a Neogene sequence of trachytic-mafic igneous rocks at Mason Spur, Erebus volcanic province, Antarctica. Bull Volcanol 80, 13 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00445-017-1188-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00445-017-1188-7